Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Contrary to the resolute doctrines human mothers howled at their rowdy tykes during the deepest hours of the night, not all species were in need of sleep. Feeble human vessels did in fact need impractically long breaks from consciousness to function properly -if their default performance could be compared to a proper function- the same way fleshy pigs and hairy rats did.

Of course, all creatures -both advanced and less bright- had a way of replenishing lost energy, it’s just that the fae way didn’t require spending a third of their lives knocked out to do so.

Honestly, Lilia found the notion of mortal circadian rhythms positively ridiculous, but he supposed that it came with its perks. Back when he commanded the greatest force in all of Twisted Wonderland, surprise attacks had been his specialty. And there was nothing more surprising than catching someone in their sleep. Synchronization was a key factor, but if the raids were indeed carried as flawlessly as planned, his cleaver’s telltale green would be painted in flushed shades of red, before his drowsy victim even got the chance to blink.

Before the weariness of the war had begun to weight on his shoulders, Lilia remembered the rush of excitement upon witnessing what he liked to call the final glance. No matter how hard he tried to conceal it, the fae was a true romantic at heart. But such poetic feelings had waned with time along with his youth and his prized collection of final glances that was once put on display for all fae of Blackscale castle to marvel.

The fact that his troops consisted mostly of nocturnal fae, that reached their peak when the enemy’s vigour was at its lowest, really came in handy. Affinity for a certain half of the day was the closest parallel one could draw to a human’s internal clock, even if in the case of nocturnal beings, said clock was turned upside down. That didn’t mean that Lilia was incapacitated for the earlier half of the day, only that he preferred to lay low and avoid exertion. Which was exactly the opposite from what he was doing right now.

“Get the fuck off me!”

The wind hissed as he cut through the horizon, black wings slick with sweat. He hadn’t intended to stay out this late. Regardless of the innate fatigue that came after dawn, frolicking in his bat-form well into the day was bound to raise suspicions. He’d never willingly give the Silver Owls credit for anything other than mind-blowing levels of unadulterated stupidity, but even the dimmest of their ranks could deduce that there was something off about a bat soaring across the morning sky.

He’d meant to have returned at the cover of the woods hours ago, but he’d been too wrapped up in his search for a soft spot across the treasury’s defences that he didn’t realize how the time had passed. Thank the Queen that a pack of recently roused maids had popped on his way, kind enough to remind him of it.

Lilia had spent the entirety of his childhood summers in Wildrose castle. The stony corridors of the fortress were a familiar terrain, easy to navigate even when chased by a flock of vicious dusters. But as soon as he’d barrelled straight out of one of the castle’s telltale arched windows, he’d found himself thrown in a deadlier hunt.

“Stupid grackles! I told you I am not your fucking breakfast!”

His vision had yet to adjust under the scathing glare of the sun, but even through his disoriented state it was impossible to miss the charging meteors of darkness that descended upon him. They hadn’t wasted a moment before cornering him against the castle’s walls, as if they were expecting him to pop out of that exact window. Lilia had counted two pairs of eyes that burned like pale suns peeking through feathery darkness, but his focus had quickly shifted to their beaks.

The way they shimmered, like black trembling lakes, shying under the moon’s reflection.

The way they cut across the wind, like obsidian blades, lunged in the face of the enemy.

The way they clenched shut, missing his foot by less than an inch.

Transforming was out of the question when he was this close to human grounds with no backup on his trail, lest he’d rather trade the pair of grackles with an entire flock of Silver Owls.

If only he could reach the forest, he’d be able to use the dense foliage to his advantage. But the vultures were aware of that, judging by the way they circled him, pushing him three steps back for every one he made. His prolonged stay in the heat was making his head feel like a simmering potion about to bubble over the cauldron and explode, and all the flying he’d recklessly indulged in throughout the night was beginning to catch up with him. His manoeuvres were growing duller, each of them sending his twitching muscles into a deeper state of exhaustion. He was running on pure adrenaline and if he didn’t come up with something, things may very well go sideways.

And wasn’t that a ridiculous thought after everything that’s happened.

All this blood spilled just so he could meet his end between the talons of a bird.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

What a shameful way to go. What an easy way out. What a suitable last note to this pointless concerto.

The woods were moving further away, as he soared higher, every swing of his wings bringing him closer to the sun and its scalding heat. His wings might as well be made out of wax, a swaying Icarus that flew too close to the light. The birds were closing in on him, flying in tighter circles that barely gave Lilia enough space to stay afloat.

If there was one thing that the all-knowing and all-seeing fates could agree upon, from their comfortable divine weaving spot, was crushing his naivety to hope. He was losing height. His lungs were burning and no matter how many labored breaths he greedily gulped, the dry air that enveloped him refused to grace his body with its precious oxygen. Supporting himself was becoming unbearable when his arms were dragging him instead of propelling. All his flapping wings seemed capable of was shaking off the excess sweat that trickled down his back. They’d almost reached the indigo tiles of the castle’s highest tower, the symbol of Wildrose fort, visible from miles away. An arrow made of pure nightsky darkness, piercing through the morning horizon. The air was thinner this far up.

The bat knew that he had reached a dead end.

But as far as dead end went, there were worse places to be. At least from here, he could still see the familiar stretch of greenery that encompassed the valley, the sharp peaking fangs dusted in snow even through the summer, the slender twin snakes of blue that slithered towards the sea and the farm lands that blossomed in their paths. Everything he had failed to protect spread in front of him. He remembered of a time that this view brought nothing but goosebumps riding up his arms. Perhaps a tinge of protectiveness as well, but now the feeling was lost on him. All that survived was the memory of her gloveless scaly arm pointing at something Lilia failed to prioritize over that blazing emerald stare. Because if the beauty of the valley sent a shiver down his spine, then her own came with tremors worthy of an earthquake’s rage.

Even if heaven itself was laid down on his feet, Lilia didn’t think he’d ever manage to steer from those bottomless slits of green. There were no eyes quite like hers and there would never be, no matter how many sockets he emptied, no matter how many eyeballs he ripped.

His eyes widened, as the rattling of his brains’ gears came to a stop.

He didn’t have to reach the forest. He didn’t need to shoot for the ground. Not when the perfect hiding spot was up. Not when their hiding spot was up.

Translucent bloodshot red eyes darted towards the tower, searching for an opening. But with his attention diverted and his stance unguarded, there was no way for him to spot the claws of the predator until they had latched onto his waist.

Lilia shrieked a horrible sound, as stabs of excruciating pain shot through his nerves. As soon as the first shock subsided, he tried to lodge his sharp thumbs straight into that glorified chicken’s eyeballs, but his bony arms failed to find their target, his attempts quickly turning into a hectic flurry of uncoordinated movements. His flailing, that failed to shake those damned talons off him, certainly didn’t help with his aim. All it managed was to derail the diptych of prey and predator from the fae’s original destination. In fact, Lilia was falling headfirst towards the ground and if they kept at that speed, meeting the soft grass of the palace garden would do him no favors.

The absent smell of blood, his bat form was so attuned to recognize, wafted across the air and the fae felt his insides being crushed.

He needed to put an end to this. And he needed to do it now!

His thumb at last found its target and now it was the bird’s turn to scream. The grip on him loosened but remained and Lilia propelled himself using his last energy reserves to defy the pull of gravity and push his arm deeper. The grackle cried once more, his nails finally retracting, but before the bat had been allowed an oxygen-filled breath through his currently non-crushed lungs, the universe came to bite him in the ass.

Or more accurately, the second bird came to bite his wing off.

Lilia writhed in pain, as the needle-pointed beak cut through the membrane of his wings, before it proceeded to repeatedly clamp down his forearm. The first taste had his thin strip of muscle tissue spasming. The second gnaw had his vision blackening. The third crunch and his bone was snapping in half.

Operating on pure instincts, with nothing but sheer white pain acting as his compass, Lilia pushed back, before the winged sadist had the chance to chomp down on him for the fourth time. He could already feel the wound trying to stitch itself, the barest hint of his telltale pink magic setting the bone back to its place. It hurt so much, it was a wonder he had yet to vomit. But no matter how fast his healing powers worked, it wasn’t fast enough. His energy reserves were entirely empty and he could feel his magic barrel across him in search of an alternative source it could feed on. Lilia took the hesitant nudge at his life force as a polite request for permission and his magical core took the spiritual walls that rose protectively across the fae’s soul as its answer.

That silent exchange did nothing to alleviate the pain -which was all that Lilia could focus on-, much less fix his wing problem that was currently bending in all the wrong angles and the bat was falling again.

An unexpected wave of consciousness washed over him, the desperate screech of a muffled voice that fought tooth and nail to hang into the thread of reality. It begged the general to open his eyes, to prepare for an attack, to conjure a masterplan, to at least try. And try he did, but no matter how hard he blinked, the black spots that soared across his vision seemed uneager to cease their airy little waltz. So, instead, Lilia resorted to clenching those useless eyes shut and folding his tattered mess of wings around his torso, waiting for the impact.

His spine whined in protest as his back met stone and the black spots were traded for twinkling stars.

It took an alarmingly long moment, before Lilia remembered how to breathe, the simple action of sucking in cool wisps of air, causing his torso to tremor. There was no way he hadn’t broken a couple of ribs. He didn’t recall breathing being such a strenuous activity. Although for a while he didn’t recall anything. No haunting thoughts of past, no dreadful bustle of present. Nothing. Just a tired bat melting against the frigidness of the floor. Until something begun prodding at his foot. Something too soft to be a beak and too solid to be a feather.

“Are you okay?”

His eyes widened.

No no no no no!

He couldn’t be caught by the enemy. He’d rather fling himself straight into the bird’s stomach than be found out like this.

Perhaps one day he would have spat at his fate and faced his executioner with nothing but a scornful smile. He’d spill out a promise of coming back to haunt the scum that dared lift their blade against him and watch the cowards roll the dice among them.

But now, when he tried to conjure an image of his demise, there was no grin etching across his face, no fearless banter, no final joke. There was only the body of Briarland’s Right General stripped off his medals and his pride, paraded across the land for everyone to crack a smile. A head on a spike put on display, a hail of tomatoes thrown to his face, his hair chipped away and sold as a charm. A corpse hanged from the same battlements he once grew up. Oh, how revolting was the concept of nailing him on the walls of the castle where she died, where her son still lied. A guarding ghost not leaving his post, the cries of a fae haunting the night.

His mind was set. Better the grackles than this gruesome end. So, he bit into the softness that had moved to nudge his head and ran for his life. There was a feeble yelp ringing somewhere from above, but it barely registered over the visceral chanting to get out. The window towered in front of him, a little too high for his taste, but still a manageable jump with a little winged aid. He’d only wished his wings would cooperate this time.

Wing.

Singular.

A muttered prayer and he leaped. And now it was the world’s turn to hold its breath, as time slowed, static whirring across the air. In the midst of all the buzzing his body moved, his little feet suspended over the ground, his wing lifting him high enough to catch sight of the sky. A liberating moment of relief that was gone as soon as it came, same as his balance. He wasn’t sure whether the crash against the wall had hurt more than the following landing on the floor, only that in between the cruel strikes of fate Lilia had deemed himself worthy of a break. On command, a veil of numbness enveloped him whole and the fae welcomed it like an old friend made at war.

_

Conscience came to him in ripples and along with it came pain, the thready shroud of calmness made of spider web and dewdrops dissolving in the shower of reality. But, unlike before, the ache that spiked across his limbs didn’t drown the rest of his senses. The fae could vaguely make out a shift of some sort and something cool but firm pressing against his fur. The sensation wasn’t bothersome per se, nor was it unfamiliar, but Lilia couldn’t put a finger on it, until his eyes fluttered open freed from the stubborn clouds of darkness that tugged the edges of his sight. And came face to face with the human that was currently tossing his battered body between their hands.

“I'm almost done.”, the human muttered, their tongue sticking out their upper lip in surgical concentration. Lilia decided that he didn’t want to know what they were almost done with. All that seemed important right now was getting out of that grip, before ‘almost’ became past, along with Lilia.

The both of them recoiled simultaneously, although the fae presumed each had their own reasons. Lilia had never been a fan of the way human blood lumped against his throat.

“No no no.”, the human protested, watching the thrashing bat make a merciless land on the floor and scramble below the closest furniture. A table. “Please don't do that. You're going to hurt yourself. Your bandages are going to come undone.”

He'd immediately thought that the reason his left wing was standing upright, instead of dragging behind him like some rodent bride’s gown with a penchant for the macabre, was due to his magical prowess. Healing was the one component of magic that worked better when asleep, so he had naturally assumed that the little break from consciousness had been enough to stitch him up until he was as good as new. What he hadn’t assumed was that this wretched being would ravage his senseless body with its disgusting paws. Whether the human aimed to trick Lilia into a false sense of security, or kill the general with poison doused gauze, he wasn’t having it.

Lilia bit the bandages and when the human reached to stop him, he bit him as well.

“I know you're afraid, but I'm only trying to help.”, they mumbled, sucking on their blood-oozing thumb, the perfect picture of a helpless child.

Pathetic.

Lilia counted the enemy’s retreat of three whole steps a win. “Look I'm going to stay over here. Just please stop moving.”

The fae had wanted to laugh. Was that human truly so daft that he seriously believed a flimsy peace offering enough to deceive a general of his status? He wouldn’t go quietly and if his foe wanted him to sit submissively while reinforcements arrived, or the following phase of some wicked scheme was set in motion, then the fae would love to disappoint them.

The mortal moved as soon as Lilia had begun unravelling the gauze over his wing. Sharp stings of pain shot through his limb in an instant, as it landed on the ground with a cracking sound, along the toothpick-looking stick that’s been presumably set to support it.The pathetic whine that fell from his lips caused his inner general to wince.

The fae wasn’t given a single moment to adjust, before those stinking fingers were prodding at him again, pulling at his wing in a way that had him gagging. It appeared that biting wasn’t getting through. He would have to resort to other methods if he wanted those fingers removed permanently. There wasn’t much to do from his position, but there was one clear path laying in front of him. It had worked fine the first time.

It wouldn’t be the largest amount of eyes he’d gouged within a day -far from it-, though it was more than what he was expecting of tοday.

His feet braced against the ground, readying his thumb’s claw before he lunged. The human’s eyes widened, his startled expression -though not quite as scared as Lilia would have hoped- fuelling his drive. He’d been a breath away from stabbing that stupefied zero-thought gaze out of his face, before he was assaulted by the colours of the rainbow.

He’d counted four different colours of feathers escaping his mouth and he was willing to bet that if the sputtering resumed for a little while longer, he was going to cough the remaining three. Where had these meddling songbirds even come from? And why the hell where they pinning him on the ground?!

“Guys you're crushing him.”

The chicken armada snapped their heads at the towering human in terrifying synchronization and Lilia begged for some freedom of movement just so he could salvage his ears from the chirping assault.

“No, I know you're just trying to help.”

“No, I know I should have asked for help.”

“No, I know it almost hit my eyes.”

Lilia’s eyes darted back and forth, an equal blend of irritation and confusion flashing across his garnet orbs, as he struggled to follow. The shrill overlap of tweeting noises was making his head hurt worse that his wing, currently crushed under the weight of a blue songbird, that was a lot heavier than it looked. With a headache of this magnitude the fae was barely able to recognize humanoid speech patterns, let alone decipher the havoc of animal screeches, but the chastising tone dripping from those flapping beaks was hard to miss.

“Yes, I know. I like them to.”, the human hummed, a faint shade of pink dusting his cheeks. Of the few indulgences his trapped position permitted, an eye roll was long overdue. The mortal’s voice was beginning to grate his nerves.

It appeared as though they were to stand in silence until the duck court announced its verdict.

“Thank you.”, the human exhaled as the birds begun to retreat, with more pushing and prodding than Lilia thought necessary, especially on that blue chicken’s account that all but stomped its way over his wing.

Feathers were quickly traded for flesh and before the fae knew what was happening, he was thrown into a cage.

“I'm really sorry for that, but you're going to hurt yourself if you keep moving.”

Lilia felt it before he saw it.

The invasive pressure of phantom fingers gripping his head, tightening, squeezing, crushing him.

Nails digging against his sculp until his eyes felt like popping out, until his brains felt like leaking out, until his life source was running out.

His magic reacted instantly. Barrelling across his veins, piling on numb fingertips, pooling over prickling skin, charging across the standing tips of his fur. He felt his transformation warp around the edges, a claw leaking into the floor, an ear smoking into the air. Lilia couldn’t fault his magic core for looking to abandon him, however fruitless its desperation might be. The clanking sound of the latch dropping down the lock was as final as the shrill howl of a guillotine falling. The fae struggled to swallow past the lump of uneasiness blocking his throat. Staying calm was an unreasonable request, but he needed to remain logical. The bars were close enough to affect him, but not close enough to harm him, he was okay, he was okay, he was okay.

He would access his surroundings, search for a weak spot, formulate a plan. He was capable of that. The general in him was capable of that. He needed a course of action, before his mind begun conjuring uncomely images out of his memory vault.

He didn’t need ghosts when he already had scars. What he needed was to snap his attention away from those revolting silver bars, cease his disgraceful wallowing, and face the one that put him there with the best snarl he could muster.

So, with a schooled expression of poised aggression, he could barely sustain over his drumming heart, he turned to his captor.

Only for his heart to stop.

Despite the infamous prowess of Briarland’s right general in the field of battle, praised even among the most constipated noble fae of the court, albeit with a hint of bitterness, his recognition skills were lacking at best. An insignificant drawback in the grand scheme of things, because he didn’t need to tell one ant from the other if the goal was to squash them all. It wasn’t his fault all ants looked alike anyway, even if the soldiers under his command had barely stifled their giggles when he had once said so.

There was no one laughing now.

Because Lilia recognized the man standing in front of him. They’d only met once but were he to take out his scabbard he could trace every crease of the man’s face, every bump and wrinkle, blindfolded. But even with all the colours of the world, all the bled flowers and the crushed snails, all the shattered stones and the smashed bones, he’d never manage to capture those eyes.

Those orbs of trapped dawn staring down on him.

His hands twitched over his sides, reaching for the once occupied emptiness, stretching to wrap around the one thing he was tasked to protect with his life, the one thing that was ripped from his grip.

His heart was working again, pumping blood at full capacity as Lilia spiraled.

That man was supposed to be dead. Information about his death at the hands of his own kin had been relayed years ago. The general himself had made sure there had been no mistakes, no human trickery in play.

Yet there was nothing dead about those cursed eyes.

The halo of soft dancing sunlight illuminating those locks of pure gold, disappeared and all that was left was the blinding flash of lightning, tearing the boiling sky. He could still hear the roars of thunder as the earth collapsed under his feet and he could still see the Knight of Dawn’s towering form, shining from above like a star, before he pushed him to his doom.

The cage toppled, as Lilia crashed against its bars. There was a distant awareness of the small clouds of smoke forming over his sizzling skin and the weak stir of his magic fighting to pull him away, but his rage had taken the reins. He was burning with it. Because the only thing that remained when love grew cold and promises turned hollow, the only thing in store for an undeserving servant was anger.

Gravity eventually gave in, but the fall was broken prematurely by that damned human. Fingers once wrapped around the silver hilt of a sword pointed at him, were now clutching the silver bars of his cage. Lilia didn’t waste a moment before he was charging again. Fangs sinking into the human’s flesh, until he was gulping down his putrid blood as if it were nectar.

The man pulled away with a flinch, but the fae’s talons had dug deeper, trapping the hand of the executioner into a prison of his own making.

Tearing flesh.

Tearing muscle.

Seeking bone.

The smell of charred flesh flooded his nostrils, the taste of iron burned him from within and for a hot moment he was back at war.

Until his claws gave out and he was getting flung across the room. The distinctive crunching sound of bones breaking barely registered as his vision swam in black.

Chapter Text

Lilia had seen people go mad in the war.

Insanity festered among soldiers like a plague, uncaring of sides, blind to the borders. Fae weren’t immune to it. Even the strongest warriors could turn into mindless monsters, consumed by spells of mania and even the calmest strategists could crumble piece by piece, slowly eaten away by a broken heart’s melancholy. The battlefield wasn't a place for the faint-hearted. Despite the physical marks of the war, he’d be forced to carry on his body through the rest of his life, Lilia would like to believe that his mind had remained unscathed.

Sure, he had grown a tad more paranoid than before, but that had come in handy in more than a few situations. There was no harm in checking behind his back for every wood splitting snap. He’d only been rewarded when unsheathing his cleaver, before the questions were asked. Even in the backstabbing court of the palace distrust proved to be another asset to his artillery.

That wasn’t madness. The sight that welcomed him when he peeled his eyes open was.

The sight of a shrunk version of the Knight of Dawn humming a tune from the edge of his bed.

He'd gobbled far too many curious looking mushrooms when supplies were running low. He’d been hit with poison laced arrows more times than he could count on both fingers and toes. He’d indulged in a few more bottles of elf wine than he’d be comfortable admitting. All in all, he knew a thing or two about illusions.

And he knew, no matter how strange the notion, that the scene that unfolded before him didn’t feel like one.

There was no pain meddling with his thoughts, no lingering disorientation or nausea wracking his senses. All feelings had been washed away by the sweeping flow of sleep and all Lilia was left with was the intense numbness that came after a night’s worth of healing. His focus shifted on his wing. The straitjacket of bandages that seemed to have spread overnight, was now encompassing his entire left side. There was barely enough room for a mobility test, but his muscles appeared able to respond to his nervous system, tensing and slackening on command, a sign that the healing process had been completed. Thankfully, his headache had subsided as well.

Burns made by metal took longer to mend -if they ever did. The fae would have to turn in his original form to access the damage, but the fact that the searing pull of charred skin had dimmed to an awkward twinge was a good omen.

Lilia felt something else resting against his skin. Something cool and soothing he couldn’t quite place. A second skin of thick texture applied over his blisters. Ingesting it was admittedly not the best idea, but the fae had yet to reach the point of wakefulness where bright ideas occurred, so he proceeded to lick it. Hints of honey and a bitter aftertaste.

Was that supposed to be burn ointment?

“You're awake!”, the elephant in the room called, as it begun trekking towards the fae. Lilia's ears perked as the walking anomaly stopped short of the table his cage was laid and offered a shy smile. “Good morning.”

His head tilted in rumination. The resemblance was uncanny. Lilia was unfamiliar with the development stages the human body underwent, but he was confident that aging was not a reverse procedure. It was impossible for that child to be the Knight of Dawn. Yet the truth was staring him straight in the eyes with a stupid smile.

A flood of possibilities swept through his mind, one less likely than the other.

It was doubtful for the child to be that man’s blood. Ever since the war had officially ended, a vast network of fae had been tasked to infiltrate human settlements and relay any information of importance to the queen’s generals. A tactic of fighting fire with fire that had yet to bear any substantial fruit. Of course, Lilia had been stripped of his title years ago. His dismissal from his position and his excommunication from fae society was an understandable punishment for his failures. There was no way for him to access the reports of the spy network anymore, but he’d like to believe that after a whole year of turning this castle upside down in his noble search he would have come across the heir to the kingdom at least once.

Maybe it was indeed the knight. Some spell gone wrong, reversing him into that weak form, the news of his death a fabricated lie to remove a target off his back.

Lilia wouldn’t dismiss entirely the possibility of a trap. He was confident that he could tell if that was the case, but he knew better than to trust his senses when magic was involved.

Perhaps Lilia had died and this was the universe’s concept of an afterlife. Unburdened by the dreadful shackles of mortality, fae had no need for heaven nor hell, but if such a place actually existed, Lilia couldn’t imagine a choice more fitting for his eternal damnation. A nightmare tailored to the colors of the twilight.

“Are you feeling better?”, said nightmare spoke, undeterred by the lack of acknowledgment -whatever acknowledgment a bat could provide. “I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean to push you that hard, but you caught me by surprise.”

Lila's garnet orbs trailed to the child's bandaged fingers.

“I didn't expect you to wake up this early.”, it continued with that grating timid voice that could only belong to a child, “I've never seen a bat awake during the day. Then again, I've never seen a bat with pink hair either.”

His eye twitched. There was no way that thing actually thought his hair was pink. The hair of Briarland’s right general. Pink!

“They're really pretty.”

Either that kid was the greatest liar the fae had ever met, or it genuinely wasn’t aware of his identity and the ruminating cow type of stare he was sending him hinted towards the latter. If he was being honest, the kid didn’t seem aware of a lot of things. Aware of the difference between red and pink, because his hair was definitely red not pink, aware of the slantwise tear that cut through his left sleeve, or the decolorated knee that peaked from under his stained tunic. Blood or original, Lilia didn’t think that someone related to the Knight of Dawn could be this clumsy.

At least he seemed aware of the knock on the door.

Lilia tensed at the sound, a feral hiss dropping from his teeth baring snarl, the picture-perfect image of a predator prepared to strike. He intended to greet this new component with a silent warning, for he knew not what role they were about to play, but the general cared not of another mortal’s script. He would meet it with combative contempt and composed caution. The spirit would be easily transpired by a defensive stance. It just so happened that in the midst of the action it was Lilia’s turn to become aware of a few inconsequential details. Like the firm pull of the bandages, the slickness of the ointment dripped floor and the destabilizing effect of silver. In the heap of countervailing forces, Lilia executed an artistic twirl that sent him crashing on the ground.

And although his hair was irrevocably not pink, his cheeks definitely sported a similar color.

In the end, the fae’s improvised choreography was for nothing. The child kneeled next to the door, as a plate was pushed through its lower half. Was that a pet flap? Lilia didn’t remember that being there when he was a kid. The plate was deposited on the table, a couple of feet away from his cage and the bat peered curiously through the bars. He barely got a glimpse of a crusty bread bun and what appeared to be a half-bitten pear, before the kid opened the window and his royal entourage of feathers came barreling across the table.

“Someone is hungry today.”

Half the bread was grinded into breadcrumbs and scattered across the table, while the other half was reserved for the mystery child, that plopped down the floor and began nursing it between his teeth.

Lilia was familiar with the nobles’ affinity to a late breakfast in bed. For the nocturnal fae of the court, breakfast was an evening event, taking place below the fiery hues of the setting sky for the more punctual ones or between the cool embrace of the early night’s breeze for the tardier. The palace’s kitchens were bustling with people around that time, baking fruit cakes topped with berries and sieving morning dew mixed with rose nectar. Lilia’s mouth was watering at the thought of all those squashed fruit doused in cinnamon honey butter.

As if summoned, the kid bounced on his feet, seemingly done with tapping on his chewy dough like some woodpecker and offered Lilia a piece of the pear.

He would rather die from parchment than accept a drop of water from a human, unless it was made by their tears. The child cocked an eyebrow at the dismissive shake of the bat’s head.

“It's just fruit. Do you not like pears?”

A bird came to nuzzle at the kid’s neck, a request for more food dropping from its flapping mouth.

Different species demonstrated different levels of proficiency in animal speech. Predictably, beastmen landed at the top of the chart, with a natural affinity for animal linguistics of all kinds. Fae came second by a lather large margin. Of course, they shared the same natural inclination when it came to the species of their assigned familiars, but -even with their magical prowess- it took a lot of time to master the remaining animal languages. Humans ranked at the bottom of Lilia’s imaginary list. Even for the most capable sorcerers, decoding basic patterns of animal speech took decades of meticulous studies, and that was light years away from learning to respond to those cues.

And yet the bird was nibbling on a piece of fruit before reaching the end of a sentence. Lilia was impressed. Who knew what kind of training that kid had been subjugated to?

“See, Blue loves it.”

Blue, presumably the bird perched on the kid’s shoulder resumed its snuggling, before sending Lilia a pointed glare. It seemed that the kid was capable of discerning colors when it came to things that weren’t his hair.

“Look I'm sorry if pears aren't up to your tastes but you should really eat something. You can’t heal on an empty stomach.”, the child continued, pushing the piece of fruit through the bars of Lilia’s temporary residence. The fae growled and to his absolute mortification the sound didn’t come from his mouth.

Lilia covered his stomach with his unbound wing, his garnet eyes’ attention shifting from over his garnet cheeks to look at his feet. All those thoughts about a noble’s breakfast must have awakened his hunger…

Oh, who was he kidding? He hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks. He really needed to eat something other than rat meat. He wasn’t a picky eater, but the domesticated rodents of the castle lacked the tantalizing sourness of their outdoor brothers. Here he was fantasizing about rat flavors, maybe he was going mad. Regardless, he refused to accept charity from humans. The offered goods could very well be poisoned. Lilia would never-

His inner monologue was cut short as a chunk of pear was shoved into his mouth.

Son or original, the fae swore that by the end of his stay in this prison he would have gained a pretty set of twilight eyeballs.

At least the kid had the decency to look apologetic at Lilia’s coughing fit. It took a long and arduous moment of spluttering before the fruit was dislodged from his throat, but when the bat could finally breathe again, he was struck by the godly taste of baked fruit melting in his mouth. Lilia licked his lips savoring the remnants of the caramel dip, as the sour sweetness tingled his senses. His eyes flung to the human fingers that were pushing the remaining pear into his cage.

“Haha, slow down!”, a voice called from beyond the bat’s fruity fantasy, but Lilia was too immersed inhaling that candied delight to care. His eyes rose expectantly over his juice dripping lips as soon as he was finished with the last piece of the pear.

“I’m sorry, but that’s all I have for now.”, his feeder said dejectedly, as it scratched the nape of its neck.

“Don't worry. They usually bring something in a couple of hours.”

He should have felt more embarrassed at gobbling down what was offered to him, but the stern echo of logic paled in front of the primitive call of survival. The honey coated, caramel topped juicy call of survival.

Besides, with his hunger satiated, his mind would be able to focus on the task at hand. Finding a way out.

Lilia’s eyes roamed across the room. Besides the empty bird cages hanging from the tower’s ceiling -an interesting ornamental choice for a human prince’s bedroom- the room was unrecognizable. Had he not known it to be a dovecot he never would have guessed.

The dents on the stone walls, reserved for the larger bird nests, used to be spacious enough to fit the two of them when they squeezed hard enough against each other. He remembered the cringing wetness of bird droppings sliding down his back, as she buried herself into his chest. His complaining at that time might have indicated otherwise, but he didn’t mind the red marks on his jaw where her horns pinched his skin. He didn’t mind the lecture that would be hurled at him as soon as the queen caught a glimpse of the princess’s garments. He didn’t mind sneezing out feathers for the rest of the day, nor the soreness that would engulf his body for hours.

The tingle of her warm breath against his pointed ear was more than enough consolation.

Now, the space meant for conspiratory whispers and hushed gossip was stuffed with bricks and mortar. Their hiding spot erased from existence.

The room was much smaller with all the cavities filled, but now that it wasn’t bustling with cawing crows and preening hawks, it looked double in size. Its military simplicity matched the practical taste of the fae. He would definitely not miss the putrid smell of bird shit. He supposed that it was rather humble for a prince, the lack of furniture -besides a frayed table and a kid’s sized bed- was a peculiar choice, but Lilia was beyond pondering on the eccentricities of a royal.

Like the kid’s obstinance to remain within the premises of its room for the whole day!

He was almost certain that the human hadn’t recognized him, but he couldn’t come up with a good enough reason for why the prince wasn’t roaming the palace with a pack of servants jumping at his beck and call. Lilia would have to form a plan around the kid’s presence. But firstly, he’d have to deal with the cage.

His warden seemed strangely set on his bandages. If he messed with them, the kid would most likely take him out to fix them. It would give the fae enough room to escape.

“Ah, you shouldn't do that.”, the human implored, as the bat began clawing at the gauze, but to Lilia's disappointment it didn’t move closer to the cage.

Instead, after an extended moment of standstill, the child made for the bed. Lilia cocked a curious eyebrow as it began crawling beneath it, the scraping sound of shuffling paper echoing in the silence of the room. The human was back on its feet with a frosting of dust coating its head and a blank page set in his hands. Upon closer observation, there were letters over the paper, inky sentences marking the beginning of a legal document Lilia got no time to decode, before the page was flipped to the blank side.

The fae’s interest was piqued, as the kid began scribbling on the page, his slumped back blocking the bat’s view of his writing. Lilia moved as close to the bars as his senses allowed him, trying to catch a glimpse of it, before the paper was shoved into his face.

“See this is you.”, the human pointed at something on the paper. It took Lilia a while before his eyes had adjusted to the sudden closeness, but when they did, he was met with a child’s drawing. How unbearably boring.

“This is your wing.”, it clarified, moving its finger to what looked like a dilapidated mast, “I'm not an expert at bat anatomy but I don't think it is supposed to bend like that. I steadied it with a small stick until it can heal but it will probably take a week or two until you're able to fly again.”

The drawing was thankfully withdrawn, as the prince slumped into the table with a faraway look.

“You must be missing your family...”

The fact that the human was a horrible painter didn’t stop it from drawing more bats around the flying rabbit that was supposed to be Lilia. It was beginning to look like a summoning circle, but from the different sizes of the doodles, the fae deduced that it was meant to depict a bat family.

He restrained himself from gagging at the brat’s attempted empathy. But, if he was forced to attend the masquerade of clowns, he might as well use the situation to his favor.

He wasn’t beyond emotional manipulation, although he typically threaded away from it for the sheer disgust it evoked him. It rarely came in handy anyway. Most of his enemies had the general’s face engraved in their memories and those who didn’t usually carried his wanted posters in their satchels. The general doubted that a few crocodile tears from the kingdom’s most hated criminal would prove useful.

But there was no general here. Just an injured helpless little bat.

So, he set aside his pride and allowed a choked whine to slip past his lips.

The child’s attention was immediately on him, as it began hovering over the cage like a duck fretting for her ducklings. Perfect.

“Are you okay? Does it hurt anywhere?”, the fae continued to hiccup pathetically, as he set in motion the most ambitious part of the plan by pointing towards the cage’s lock. In the midst of his lachrymose acting, he failed to notice that he aimed in the same direction as that stupid drawing.

“Your family?”, the kid asked, twilight eyes narrowed in confusion, struggling to decipher the bat’s point.

Lila wanted to scream that he didn’t care about the stupid bat family he didn’t even have but chose to resort to a firm nod towards the lock and another towards the puzzled child. He thought his instructions were pretty straightforward.

“Oh, my family!”, the fae barely suppressed the urge to throw his head against the cage and let silver do the rest, “I can show you my parents.”

The parents…

His heart stopped.

Lilia had no time to object before the cage was yanked from the table, his body jostling a little too close to the edges. The fae blinked as the short march came to a halt and he was suddenly assaulted by the scorching rays of the midday sun in all its shining glory.

“There!”

He couldn’t tell where there was. The kid wasn’t pointing at anything and there was not a single person walking across the overgrown bailey.

“That's my uncle Henrik in the middle. And next to him is his own father and my mother and that one kneeling on his right is my father.”, Lilia’s eyes narrowed, as he tried to make sense of what the kid was describing. He was beginning to think that his warden might have a few screw looses, when he spotted it.

The statue of the royal family.

“He was a real knight!”, the boy, no, the heir declared. The son of the man that took everything away from Lilia looked at him with starlit eyes, as he sealed his fate, “When I grow up, I want to be a knight just like him.”

Lilia’s eyes bore into his head. The Knight of Dawn son’s head.

“Then I will be able to train with everyone and- Oh, they're starting!”, the hiss of a whistle tore through the sky and Lilia was pulled back into the cool shade of the room, as the members of the king’s guard swarmed the courtyard.

He had watched them train before. Now he watched their prince cut the air with his wooden toy sword, as he mimicked their every form. He saw him assume one horrible stance after another, swinging his weapon to an invisible enemy. He saw his filthy dull hair transform into a raging golden mane and his focused stare turn into the coldhearted glare of his nightmares. His bandaged hands dripped with the color of the slayed.

It wasn’t long before his atrocious technique caught up with him and a particularly sloppy twist had him tripping over his own feet. The fae felt the obnoxious tug of dryness pulling at his eyelids, but he dared not blink.

After the man’s death Lilia had banished any hopes of retribution. Even when he'd first laid eyes on the kid he'd only considered it a narrow possibility.

Now, he was the one standing on the high ground, smiling down at his fallen prey.

Served on fate's silver plate.

The devil’s spawn could have another carefree night of dreams.

A night hardly made a difference. He would allow him to step back on his feet and dust his scratched knees. He would watch him resume his form hesitantly and fall back into his routine. He would plan while his sun filled eyelashes fluttered close and sleep claimed him whole. He would wait until he could walk more than three steps in a row, until he wasn't binded by no lock.

And then he would strike.

A prince for his queen…

… an eye for an eye

Chapter Text

“Can you fold it?”, the prince prompted, and Lilia’s wing bent in line.

“That's good. Too good. It doesn't even look broken.”, he continued, brows furrowing in confusion.

The confusion was warranted, of course. The extension of the ongoing medical checkup, less so, in Lilia’s heavily biased opinion.

The fae had to suppress a very un-bat-like snort from escaping his lips.

The prince hadn’t bothered inspecting the progress of his healing or exchanging his bandages for new ones for a whole other day. The brat had been so arrogantly convinced of his knowledge on veterinary medicine that he didn’t even entertain the idea of shooting Lilia a brief look-over, despite the obvious signs of the bat’s displeasure.

Instead, the fae had to be subjugated to another dragging day of apathy, restrained in his silver cell, compelled to watch his son dallying across the room with that raucous flock of mottled chicken on his tail, while being forcefully fed the approximate amount of a pear tree! Okay, perhaps the fruit treats didn’t pose as much of an issue, but with the return of both mobility and judgment, having to eat from a human’s palm felt utterly degrading.

At last, when the second night had fallen, the prince had deemed a change of gauze appropriate, hence the bat had been temporarily rid of his silver prison. Both fae and human had been rendered speechless. The first because of the abrupt disappearance of the metal’s lingering effects, ever so subtle, yet ever so present in the persistent pull on his mind or the lingering pain at his spine, now he stood free under the rays of pale moonlight, a fae born anew. The latter, because of the unexpected disappearance of the bat’s wound, an injury that should have optimistically taken weeks to heal, if not entire months. An injury that wasn’t there.

“Your mood has improved significantly since yesterday.”, the human whispered more to himself, “Do you feel any pain?”

The bat shook its head obediently. He refused to go back to the cage’s impairment. He’d ace every challenge thrown his way. He’d eat a hundred pears from a hundred humans’ hands if that meant he could finally leave this place.

If that human wanted him to jump, he’d jump.

“Can you try to fly?”, and if he was asked to fly, he’d soar.

A few circles across the ceiling were enough to convince the human of the bat’s early discharge.

“It must have been less serious than I thought.”, his son evaluated, before his shoulders raised to a noncommittal shrug. The expression of puzzlement stretching across the human’s face ebbed away, for one of satisfaction to settle. Muted joy paired with something else, something the fae didn’t care to discern.

“You must be looking forward to return to your family. If you ever happen to be close you can always fly by. I promise to share all my pears.”

Lilia gritted his teeth, as he forced an innocent nod. A final display of submissive apprehension, before he was taking off to the sky.

“Goodbye!”, the prince waved, braced against the windowsill, his voice assuming a desperate tilt fitting of a teary farewell. That same unreadable emotion was back, drenching every letter that left his mouth with an inexplicable heaviness, as it ricochetted against the silence of the windless night.

Lilia didn’t spare the brat a single glance.

He sailed through the horizon, wings flexing to their full span, until there was no telling where the bat ended and the darkness began for the fae became the sky. There was no breeze gusting across the obsidian skyline, but the rush of flying back in the open air was enough to blow life into every fiber of the fae’s being, shooting through the starlit canopy like an arrow fired from a taut string. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d experienced the pure release that came with the simple act of flying in the night, the last time he’d allowed himself to bask in the all-encompassing darkness.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

At last, the day’s frigidness melted from his body. Icy tension thawed down his tense shoulders, his frosty jaw finally able to unclench, as a snowstorm of numbness spreading up until his grinded molars.

It had taken every ounce of self-restraint not to steal those twilight eyes, as soon as he’d stepped out of that cage. The angle had been ideal, a clear path towards his son’s demise paved with roses and gold.

Patience had never been his strongest asset, but no one could fault the general of recklessness. Lilia had always been a great strategist. Resolving problems before they even got to arise, calculating imaginary risks so that they remained exactly that, imaginary, avoiding consequences with the swiftest of maneuvers, always figuring out the optimal way to victory.

His cunning had proved handy at court, but it truly came to blossom in the battlefield. His reputation as the deadliest weapon in the Queen’s artillery proceeded him, but that moniker transcended the tight borders of the battlefield, for war didn’t start with blood and sweat, rather with parchment and a game of chess. And oh boy, was he good at chess. Afterall, he’d learnt from the Queen herself, and Lilia was content to see his skills used in the service of the realm.

Despite the sheer magical advantage of the fae, one that could not be outmatched even to the employment of a million human sorcerers, in terms of numbers, the Queen’s troops found themselves in deep waters. Of course, one of Lilia’s soldiers was worth twenty Silver Owls, but it became a problem when they’d have to face fifty to compensate for their losses. That was where Lilia’s part came in.

The fae wouldn’t ask of his soldiers to fight a battle he wouldn’t lead, much like he wouldn’t lead a battle he hadn’t planned himself. He’d stand next to the ones who entrusted him with their lives and he’d bring them back to their families alive, because that was his duty to them and to his kingdom.

So, in the dark hours of the night, Lilia did what he always did best, he calculated. He watched the dark ceiling of the old dovecot transform into a canopy of linen and the pale slivers of moonlight reflected on the silver bars of his cage turn a lively green, the dim color of the lanterns burning inside the tight space of the general’s war tents, as the Queen’s favorite puppet immersed in a game of chess.

And in a laughable twist of fate, even when he was rotting five feet under the ground the scale tilted in his favor.

Lilia could kill the son. He could make a necklace of his entrails and forge a crown of his milk teeth, and he could waltz in front of his uncle’s throne with the biggest smile in the world.

And what a bunch of nothing that would accomplish.

The Fae Queen would be accounted for his sins regardless of his exile, war would find his people unprepared, while Lilia would be hunted across the lands by both former allies and current enemies. But most importantly, the protection spells placed on Wildrose castle would be reinforced, the guards’ shifts across the perimeter tripled. The palace’s entire defenses would be fortified. The place would become impregnable and the chance to retrieve the egg would be blown out of existence like a flickering flame on a melting candle.

Her son would pay with his life for Lilia’s selfish satisfaction. And Lilia would crawl back to a dark hole of his own making, disgustingly alive like the persevering cockroach he was and resume his favorite pastime of drinking himself senseless with the new addition of a flashy set of manmade jewelry.

He'd go and sacrifice everything that mattered, everything he’d been entrusted with, everything he’d failed to protect for a tantrum. Acting like he was entitled to revenge when his incompetence was the catalyst that deprived the Valley of a princess, the Queen of a daughter, the heir of a mother.

He was undeserving of redemption, unfit for forgiveness, unworthy of a happy ending, he’d make sure of that. But the least he could do was attempt to salvage whatever wrongs he still could. The least he could do was die trying to return Malleus to his throne, just so he could hate him from the comfort of his crown.

After that, he was free to go back to drinking himself to death and beating himself over one less mistake.

His mind settled under the rhythmic thrum of the human prince’s snoring. He’d make patience his asset.

Because the Knight of Dawn’s son was more useful alive than adorning his neck.

Because who would be paying attention to his prince when they were too busy searching for their own?

The moment of reprieve was over. A final greedy inhale filled his lungs with air, a reluctant farewell to the night’s sanctuary, before flying over the other side of the tower and slipping inside through an unglazed window.

His black wings melted to reveal clawed ebony tipped arms, ears dropping to the sides of his head, his snout straining into a tight-lipped smile, as the fae shifted to his original form. His hands wandered his body in search of burns and scratches, but thankfully, everything seemed to be healing nicely. He didn’t have to climb for long, before the winding staircase came to an end and the dovecot’s eroded door came to view. Lilia slipped into the shadows, where the darkness welcomed him like an old friend, before conjuring a sphere of light in his palm. The little sun glinted with the paleness of the plains in the morning’s glory, but when the fae’s hands retreated to his sides its color darkened, transforming into the vibrant shade of blazing poison-dripping emeralds. He let it float in the lightless corridor and with a snap of his fingers, the door creaked open.

Lilia lurked unseen, as the child popped its head into the hall.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

The fae could hear the human’s heart thrumming against his small ribcage, standing petrified in the threshold of the door, eyes darting between his room and the staircase. His flickering orbs, dried of their sunset hues, regarded the green sun with rapt attention, but when Lilia willed the little ball of light to move, the child hesitated. What an awfully prudent prince. That just wouldn’t do.

The fae swirled back into his bat form and stepped into the light.

“Is that… What are you doing here? The forest is on the other side.”, the prince’s eyes lit upon recognition.

Lilia doubted the kid could tell him apart from the dozen bats that lurked in every nook and cranny of the castle, but at least his presence had got the human to step out of the room, albeit hesitantly.

The prince failed to notice the wicked smile that stretched across his face, along with the ominously slow movement of his room’s door, “You’re going to get lost-”, as it fell shut with a soft clicking sound.

The kid’s body went limp.

“No.”, he said, his tone dropping to a faded whisper, as he spun on his heels and began his jostling assault on the doorknob. His movements became more frantic with every failed attempt, until he was bashing his shoulder against shaking wood, his voice coming out in hectic pleas meant more for himself rather than the bat’s sensitive ears. “Please open. I shouldn't be out of my room. He won’t like that.”

The fae rolled his eyes at the dramatics, making a spin of his own, heading towards the wall. It always helped to know the terrain and Lilia knew this castle like the back of his palm. With a calculated knock of his wing, the wall subsided to reveal a secret passage. The boy finally seemed to be catching a whiff of his surroundings when Lilia’s light sphere moved to the tunnel.

“How did you do that?”, the human gawked, but made no move to follow Lilia, even when the bat entered the greenlit tunnel. “You want me to follow you?”, he asked to which the fae offered an eager nod, before the light stirred into the passage’s narrow path, leaving the child in the darkness.

“I can’t walk around the castle. I will stay here until the door opens”, he decided.

Lilia remained afloat for a couple more seconds, waiting until the kid grew tired of throwing his weight against the door in a vicious tackling sequence whose only result could be a colorful array of bruising, and when it became apparent that the human was not going to give up, the bat resorted to a sigh.

Before he plunged into the floor.

The light above him flickered, a breath away from meeting the ground, at the exact moment Lilia decided to break his fall. Afterall, his performance had to be believable.

“Are you okay?!” The rain of frenzied steps came to a stop as the kid’s knees crashed against the stone ground, pulling Lilia’s limp body close to his chest with sickening gentleness. “Is it your wing? Does it hurt?”

The creaking clank of the passage entrance sliding shut echoed behind them with an air of finality and although the bat could feel the boy tensing even with his eyelids closed, the softness of his grip didn’t falter.

The human moved him until he was comfortably settled in one palm and used his free arm to scan the sealed wall. The fae wouldn’t recommend patting with naked hands anything within the castle’s treacherous walls, but he let the kid satisfy his curiosity. He could no longer hear him prodding around when he felt a hesitant nudge at the back of his head. He didn’t need more prompting to be reanimated.

Unlike humans, fae weren’t hindered by the darkness, they thrived in. Their senses, dulled by the haze of the morning’s heat, became sharper during the mellow chill of the night, more attune to their environment. And so, a flitting glance of fluttering eyelashes was all it took for the fae to take in the human. The glow of the light cast mismatched shadows over his golden mane, his pallid face, though momentarily washed by relief at the bat’s awakening, quickly returned to its earlier stressed glory, only dampened by the sickly green highlights of Lilia’s magic, as the boy curled into himself until he looked tiny even to the bat’s shrunken form.

“I told you we can't go that way. I’m not supposed to…”, he muttered, before raising to unsteady feet and turning back to the wall. Lilia was fighting a losing battle with that stubborn crybaby, but mostly with his nerves. “If only I could find the latch.”

He was having none of that.

“Hey, quit pulling me!”, the boy yelped, as the bat led him down the corridor. Okay, perhaps the sudden application of a very un-bat like amount of strength could be considered suspicious, but that sheltered prince was way too focused throwing a fit to notice. As soon as the kid regained control of his wobbly limbs, his feet came to a halt, heels digging into the floor so rigidly, Lilia thought he might have grown roots.

“You want to go that way? I don't know...”

Malleus was going to die in his unhatched egg before they even got to leave this tower if they kept at this pace.

“O-okay, but as soon as we’re out, we’re coming back to my room.”, the child relented. And although he did continue to drag his feet across the passage, Lilia counted it as a win.

The earlier boastful confidence he’d swelled with, going on about his expertise at traversing familiar terrain, was beginning to wither. The steep descent was to be expected, afterall, they were situated in the tallest point of the castle. Lilia wasn’t particularly certain he remembered being required to crawl for this long, but he attributed the elongated duration of their scrambling to the human’s sluggishness. However, it was blatantly clear that something was wrong the third time they slithered past the same intersection.

Maybe he didn’t know the back of his palm as well as he thought he did.

At least the kid didn’t seem aware of Lilia’s inner turmoil, having entirely conceded their navigation to him, content to be pulled around like a stringless puppet. Perhaps content wasn’t the right word to describe the tremors coursing through the child’s coiled body. Lilia could feel the bandages below him dampening with sweat, but the child made no sound of protest or complaint, as he continued to cradle the bat in his extended palm.

Apparently, turning right hadn’t been the correct option, because instead of running into the grill cutting through the corner of the kitchen’s floor, Lilia was facing a wall, thick blocks of stone lined with mortar blocking their way.

The fae was mildly impressed at the boy’s ability to remain silent as they both stared at the dead end of the tapering passage, but his relief died, when his ears caught the sound of the child’s breathing growing frantic.

Lilia had never been good with kids. Whether it was the pampered golden sons and the coddled diamond daughters of the court’s nobility, demanding to be entertained at everyone’s expense, or the screeching orphaned children of the inflicted war zones, thrashing against the arms of his soldiers for the mortal offense of trying to save their lives, the fae had always failed to find a common ground of communication. They’d always reminded him of helpless prey growling at imaginary predators, too entitled to reason with and too clingy to be taken seriously.

As a general, it was essential to avoid tying himself to liabilities and as fae of sound mind, it was vital to steer away from threats to that very sanity.

If fae children were impossible to deal with, Lilia couldn’t begin to imagine how much harder human offsprings would be to manage. Especially one hyperventilating in the caving walls of an unfamiliar tunnel, that was slowly running out of air.

He needed to do something and he needed to do it quickly.

It seemed that the human retained enough special awareness to notice Lilia’s tug towards the edge of the wall, as he elevated the bat at the height of its left corner. Maybe the fae hadn’t been entirely familiar with the particular passage, but the kid that grew within these halls, a stubborn weed sprouting between the crevices of the sunless stone floor, knew all about hidden tunnels. He knew they rarely amounted to blind endings, and they always hid a secret pathway beneath those thick layers of rock. That was their whole point of existence.

His rummaging across the coarse surface of the stones was brought to a halt when a questionably small one sunk under the weight of his finger with a hopeful click, before the barrier that entrapped them collapsed, like the blade of a guillotine dropping on the ground, only to reveal the worse place they could have wound up in.

Lilia didn’t expect the Knight of Dawn’s son to agree with him.

“That’s the worse place we could end up! We can’t be in the throne room! Uncle Henrik is going to be so mad.”, the boy whined, continuing to spiral in a frenzy of emotions, wide watery eyes darting wildly across the room, as his free palm coiled defensively around his forearm, in a grip that reminded him of a python from the Sunset Savana wrapping its tail around its prey, with the sole difference that the only one the kid succeeded to asphyxiate, judging by the darkening color of his skin, was himself.

To Lilia’s immense horror, the brat’s first reaction was to backtrack into the airless bleakness of the tunnel, but thankfully the wall was up just as the boy dived, his light sphere vanishing along with the rest of the path. The nasty collision with the risen wall knocked the air out of the human’s lungs and hopefully some sense in his brains. It jostled Lilia enough to impact his reaction time.

So, it took him way longer than he felt comfortable admitting, before he realized they were no longer the only ones dawdling in the throne room.

The bat shook the queasiness away, as the sound of approaching footsteps echoed within his reconnecting mind with profound clarity. The boy had yet to catch up with their situation, too busy stroking his flushed shoulder that had withstood the second self-inflicted assault of the day, reeling from the force of the crash. But they didn’t have the luxury to wait for him to feel better.

The breathy gasp the boy released, as Lilia tugged his mangled body away from the open and behind the screening wall that separated the area of the throne from the rest of the room, was silenced briskly, and although the fae didn’t appreciate the sensation of child drool dripping down his wing, he would rather drown in human piss before letting anyone endanger his mission.

“What’s the point of having us fetch them every day? I thought ceremonial regalia was supposed to be reserved for special occasions.”, a gruff voice bemoaned.

“You know how the king gets when he doesn’t get his royal soother.”, a second human quipped.

Reconnaissance was impending. The boy below him was no longer whimpering pathetically, rather, in an unexpected display of mercy out of the clutches of the universe, he appeared surprisingly sober. Lilia waited until the child met his piercing gaze, a wordless conversation unraveling between pools of blood and skies of purple, before slowly removing his wing from the human’s mouth. The child drew a sharp breath from his shaky lips, but he still managed to compose himself enough to offer the bat a firm nod and the fae required no further push.

He climbed clumsily over the side of the human’s head, sharp feet getting momentarily caught in that tangled golden ladder of hair, but after a few fierce shakes and a couple of chopped strands, the bat eventually reached the summit. Lilia found himself missing his conjured star of glowing light, because the moment he raised his eyes, he was assailed by the blinding brightness of a hundred blazing suns. Images of the night sky being forced to an early dawn, the starless coal-black sky bursting in flames, as a red curtain of burning arrows descended upon Lilia’s regiment, were pushed back into the general’s memory vault, where they belonged, forced to haunt him on a different occasion, because the fae was currently running on a tight schedule that was growing tighter with every step.

Lilia counted three Silver Owls, members of the king’s guard judging by the silver symbols that twinkled beneath the light of the massive chandelier, walking down the red carpet of the room’s chessboard floor that led straight into the elevated platform of the throne, and by extension, their hiding spot.

“You can’t talk like that! You’re going to get us killed!”, the third man protested.

“Oh relax. No need to get hung up on a little joke.”

“All three of us are going to get hanged because of your little joke.”

The fae’s garnet eyes landed upon the royal scepter, a flamboyant rod made out of twisting leaves of gold and sky-blue gemstones, swirling around its apex, where a gilded crown resided, its curvy arches folding like the bars of a cage over its blood red cap. Lilia found it entirely unfashionable, a kitsch trinket that couldn’t begin to compare to the Draconia obsidian regalia of emerald embellishment. But most importantly, he found it extremely close to them, laid in the precipice of the velvet seat.

Lilia flicked his black little bat fingers, causing one of the tasteless banners hanging from the ceiling, to fall straight into the guards’ dumbfounded mugs and without a second thought, he jumped. The child’s hands came to catch him, before he’d even unfurled his wings and the fae was pressing forwards, leading them to the back side of the throne, straight into an underground tunnel.

Well, more like a vertical slide.

If his eardrums hadn’t been already impaired by all those years spent in unhealthily close proximity to canon blastings and battle horns, they certainly were now, faced with the human’s incontrollable screeching. The shouting came to a stop along with them when they were ungracefully dumped into solid ground. Lilia found himself wondering how many times he had to smash headfirst into one of the castle’s interior surfaces, before the universe had had enough.

At least the bony sack of flesh had somewhat broken their momentum. Abducting this child was proving more tiresome than he’d originally expected.

“It smells so good.”, the boy’s voice rang so softly, that the fae wouldn’t have believed he’d been screaming his lungs out just a moment ago had he not witnessed it himself. His weary bones cracked as he stretched, wincing slightly at a rather sharp twinge flaring down his back, before he took in the scene.

They’d finally made it to the kitchens. It appeared that some of the buried images of his memory vault did occasionally come in handy, although he was kind of impressed at himself for remembering the trapdoor behind the throne. The only time he’d ever seen it be used was during the last assassination attempt against the Queen and that had been centuries ago.

The boy’s warnings proved to be true, ass Lilia’s nostrils were attacked by the rich fragrance of freshly baked dough.

“That’s the same fruit the birds brought!”, the human scrambled on his feet, every bit of fear left within the caverns of the tunnel, replaced by an expression of youthful excitement, sparkling over his captivated orbs.

From his designated seat, over the boy’s palm, that stood a little over the height of the counter, Lilia beheld the object of the kid’s sudden fascination, and the decorated fae general couldn’t help the trickle of saliva that dripped down his chin.

The dozen corpses of strangled rats may differ, but Lilia had always considered his oral palette rather extinguished. He supposed that the privilege came with being raised in the coves of the Draconia royal court where centaur paws and unicorn broth were common delicacies. His dietary stimulus may have altered during the war, with glowing mushrooms and slithering insects consisting his typical meal when supplied were running low, but he’d inwardly retained his formerly refined taste.

Said refined taste didn’t include the putrid likes of bland human food. And yet when faced with tables upon tables of manmade dishes Lilia could barely suppress the guttural growl of his stomach.

Piles of glossy pork pies and steamy bread buns rose above them, threatening to topple over at any given moment and suffocate them in soft dough and savory fillings. Besides said tower, Lilia gazed at the glistening vinegar sauce poured over the skewed head of a roasted pig, biting down an apple and next to it a stewed capon bathed in a spiced broth thickened with egg yolks. The subtle tones of fermented wine, even though made of perfectly regular grapes, sharing none of the magic ingredients that gave elf wine its infamous properties, added a note of lightness in the air.

But the dish that seemed to monopolize the kid’s attention was the crusty blackberry tarts. The strips of rose baked dough, crossed in a fishnet design, barely restrained the torrent of fuchsia berry jam from overflowing over the tart’s sweet surface.

Perhaps a break was in order. Afterall the kitchen was entirely empty and the prince’s absence would likely be accounted for during his delivered breakfast, which gave them the whole night to cover enough distance within the Tenebrous Woods to have the Silver Owls occupied for the remainder of the day. They had more than a few hours to kill.

He’d thought the human was on the same page, but Lilia’s berry fantasy was shattered when he felt himself being tugged backwards.

“We should head back to the tower.”, he muttered dejectedly.

It appeared that the prince desired to continue reprising his role as the invariable factor in the fae’s perfect scheme.

Lilia didn’t understand. The boy had been delighted mere moments ago and now his face was stretched in a distant scowl, his stomach rumbling with the same displeasure that coursed through the fae’s veins. He was clearly hungry. Lilia would have to tap on that.

“You can’t steal that!”, the boy supplied, attempting a chastising tone even though his voice barely rose above a whisper. The bite out of the berry tart melted in his mouth, dilated pupils speaking of his tastebuds’ glee, as he mulled the small piece of desert onto his tongue, savoring every note of flavor.

He was more than content to exact a small piece of revenge, by enforcing the same eating etiquette forced upon him for the past two days, when the human moved to snatch the mouthwatering snack out of his grip. Lilia didn’t even need to put his wings to use to reach the mouth of the child, before shoving the rest of the tart straight into it.

It took a moment for the human to recover from the initial shock, but the bat caught the faintest mandibular movements, before the kid’s face erupted in pure mirth. The way his eyes popped, the playful pink prevailing over the softer hues of blue, was beyond ridiculous, coupled with the rosy blush dominating the boy’s cheeks, putting together an elated expression that reminded Lilia more of a pixie drunk on morning dew, rather than a human.

The coughing fit said human pixie broke into was to be expected after practically inhaling a whole tart, but what the fae did not predict was the suspicious glance the boy threw towards the door, before hurtling towards the table and stuffing his tunic’s pockets with as much food as they could fit.

And then something awful happened.

Lilia Vanrouge, the esteemed General of the Right, renowned Draconia executioner and the Dragon Queen’s right hand, the masked beast that wrecked bloodshed upon the camps of the Silver Owls, the notorious eye thief, that Lilia Vanrouge, laughed.

And it was neither sinister nor arrogant, there was no condescending smirk adorning his features, no malicious intent behind those garnet orbs. Only a giddy feeling asking for release and an airy sound he didn’t think himself capable of anymore.

The general caught himself quickly, drowning the heinous sound under the guise of a cough. He didn’t get the chance to beat himself over it, because as soon as he’d straightened to his full height of six inches, the kitchen double door burst open.

“Stop stealing the food, you tart thief!”

The boy froze where he stood, left palm thrust into his pocket, right one plunged into a mountain of sweets, his mouth filled to the brim with berry jam, purple splotches of evidence smearing his cheeks. The scene would have been entirely comedic had the fate of the fae kingdom not resided on those mauve smudged hands.

Fortunately, the child was quick to recover. And instead of tarts, Lilia was the one being stuffed within the clutches of the wrinkly linen.

The bat blinked at the new beige horizon that stretched at every angle, planting his talons into the sloth to keep himself from falling further into the cloth and although he was a tad grateful for not being dumped into the kid’s pockets -for the fae didn’t think his pride would withstand a dive into the ocean of marmalade- he’d ideally rather avoid being squeezed over the human’s bare skin entirely.

The jostling began almost immediately, and Lilia could tell that the kid was running away, before he felt himself being abruptly pulled downwards and the cream shade of the cloth darkened.

Lilia could barely distinguish the shadowy outlines of his surroundings from beneath the fabric wall, but he still gathered that the kid must have slid under some type of furniture. A table most likely.

“I can still see you. Don't make me crawl down there.”, the low female voice warned, but there was no sign of movement from beneath the bat, other than the frantic swelling of the kid’s chest. Lilia traded his blurry view in favor of peeking through the child’s loose collar and was met with the sight of wide undecided eyes and a shaking palm, planted firmly against its owner’s mouth.

“I could report you to the guards. The king isn’t fond of thieves and I’m not either.”

The last statement was spoken a little more ominously and Lilia found himself panicking.

The moment the prince got out he would be recognized, the guards would be notified, and his plan would be shipwrecked. He cursed at his stalling. They should have left this place the moment they had the chance. Once again, his failures would condemn another Draconia, when he’d been so close to setting things right. Pathetically enough, his breathing was matching the feverish rhythm of the chest beneath him.

The human could pretend he didn’t exist for so long, and so after a few moments of waiting, he revealed himself.

“I didn’t mean to steal. I j-just…”, he stammered, and Lilia saw the outline of a child’s sweaty hands wringing nervously, “I was really hungry. I’m sorry.”, he finally managed, though by the end of his faltering words his voice had dropped into a whisper, barely echoing loud enough to penetrate the thick walls of the tunic.

The fae failed to decipher the purpose of the human’s stuttered apology. He’d never known someone of noble status, let alone of royal standing, to excuse himself as much as that prince had in the past two days. The future of the human kingdom appeared rather bleak with a sniveling ruler steering its wheel, but that brought him little satisfaction.

Afterall any moment now the woman would be calling the guards and it would take more than a set of wobbly feet and a pair of tiny wings to flee in time.

Half of their frolicking could have been avoided had Lilia been able to use a whiff of teleportation magic. He’d only need to barge into the kid’s room, throw him over his shoulder like the skinny sack of golden potatoes he was and with a snap of his inky fingers, they’d be off into the bowels of the woods. And what a breeze that would have been. He wouldn’t have to wait until some human deemed him fit of release, he wouldn’t have to snake across one dusty tunnel after another, he wouldn’t have to cowardly flee in the face of the meager force of three Silver Owls and he certainly wouldn’t have to be tossed under anyone’s shirt, trapped into another cage made of grimy linen and sticky human flesh.

He cursed the damned sorcerers and their casted blocking spells, powerful enough to block all relocation-related magic within the premises of the castle, but most of all he blamed himself.

“Look at the state of you!”, the female voice thundered once again, “Has no one taught you manners? Stealing my tarts like that.”

Wait…

Lilia’s eyes blew open, his claws sinking further into the tattered strips of fabric. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, but now that his lungs had been released from the clawed grip of panic, crystal fresh air flooded his system, a smile tugging the edge of his lips. He watched the hazy silhouette of the woman place her hands on her large hips and although there was no way of him to get a glimpse of her expression, the booming voice was indicative enough of her mood to paint an irritated scowl.

But most importantly, he watched her make no move to bow. No attempt to revoke a royal’s apology. No motion to call the guards.

She didn’t recognize him.

“You made them?”, the boy asked, and Lilia refused the urge to facepalm straight into the kid’s torso, because he failed to see how the identity of the pastry chef was even remotely relevant to their situation and yet the confirmation was enough to wash any remnants of regret from the child’s shivering core, his tangling fingers moving to form excited fists.

That human would be the death of him.

“Why of course.”

“They are delicious! My friends have brought me fruit before, but it never tasted that good! You must be a sorcerer!”

The fae would dare claim that turning berries into tarts was a tad less magical than turning hay into gold, but he doubted the boy could tell the difference. Regardless, it wasn’t time for premature celebrations, nor snide remarks, it was high time they left, before their sudden burst of luck ran out.

“I am something far more important than that.”, the woman boasted, causing Lilia to pause in his tracks because who was that woman, “I am the cook.”

This time, the fae couldn’t resist slapping his palm across his head, too fed up with the incredulity of the situation, but his carelessness came with a higher price, because as soon as the bat’s anchored hand was removed, Lilia found himself falling through the clothes. Holding on proved as futile as clambering upwards, as the fae plopped over the kitchen floor in a heap of torn beige.

The howling screech he was met with was far from a warm welcome, but the seizing of the broom, placed upside down against the nearest corner, was plain rudeness.

The bat was quick to fall into a defensive stance, wings stretching menacingly to appear bigger than his scant height of half a foot, fangs bared, eyes shrinking into deadly blood-red slits drowning in the engulfing voids of sclera, when his view of the opponent and her swinging weapon was blocked.

“You can’t hit him!”

Those serpent slits widened, returning to their normal round disposition, as he took in the scene. The human had rushed in front of him, pulling up a defensive -although slightly crooked- stance of his own, soft fists clenched, twilight eyes narrowed, his pudgy pink lips pulled into a tight scowl, as he faced the ire of the armed woman.

“I won’t let a rat roam through my kitchen.”, the self-proclaimed cook bit back and Lilia was able to get a glimpse of her from over the boy’s tense shoulder blade.

She wasn’t just tall enough to tower over the puny stature of a mere child, especially one as runty as that particular human, she was downright massive by fae standards, let alone mortal adult standards. Perhaps the size of his current transformation was clouding his perception, but Lilia thought that were this woman to stand shoulder to shoulder with Baul, in an imaginary world built for the shake of this argument, his lieutenant would have but a head over her, when Lilia barely managed to reach the dip of his waist.

Maybe that analogy was not working in his favor, because in his original form the fae was hardly the size of a child, but the fact remained that this enormous specimen of a woman was looming over them as if they were mere ants blocking her way, and the same boy that had been reduced to tears at the sight of his own shadow, was standing his ground, staring back at the face of the enemy with nothing but resolve.

She didn’t look like she was planning to back down, but as soon as her burn-marred fingers grazed the child’s shoulder with the clear intention of pushing him aside, the boy threw his arms against her belly and pushed, forming the ficklest barrier Lilia had ever seen. And though the woman was nowhere near close being pushed aside, her rat-induced hysteria did waver.

“He’s not a rat! He’s my friend and he’s hurt!”, the kid yelled, his voice assuming a high-pitched scale Lilia hadn’t thought him capable of. Both general and chef lingered dumbfoundedly, watching the human’s struggling amount to nothing apart from staining the offender’s apron in all shades of purple.

“Please, we’re really sorry for causing trouble, we’ll be on our way, you’ll never have to see us ag-”, he begged, his sudden desperation shaking Lilia enough to close his gaping mouth and step between the boy’s open legs, prepared to defend a human of all things, when the kitchen’s door was slammed open.

The bat tackled the child with all the strength he possessed as soon as he caught side of the silver cloak. They were back under the table watching with bated breaths, as the man Lilia recognized as one of the guards they’d come across in the throne room strode through the room as if his head depended on it.

“You! Have you seen a boy wandering around?!”, he commanded, pointing an authoritative finger at the woman. “Blond hair, purple eyes? Almost seven, looks like five.”

Lilia’s stomach dropped. They weren’t supposed to note of the prince’s absence until late morning at best. They hadn’t even reached midnight and there were already soldiers tracking them!

The woman didn’t look one bit impressed, in fact she appeared mildly annoyed at the presence of the guard and his extended finger in her domain, although at this point, the fae presumed that her features were permanently stuck in an angry scowl. The guard seemed similarly agitated, and as he opened his mouth the fae had a vague idea the colorful choice of words he was planning to spew, but the woman cut him off before he’d made a sound.

“I think I would have noticed if there was a kid in my kitchen.”, she snapped, “What did he do?”

“None of your business cook.”, the man spat back, leveling the woman with a condescending glare, before walking away, “Just let us know if you find him.”

Lilia was left staring in astonishment at the door the man had slammed close during his dramatic exit. There was no way they had gotten away with this. The fae felt a little silly pinching his arm, but a quick confirmation of his wakefulness took priority.

“Hey kid! You and your rat can get out of there.”, the bat was scooped in the boy’s bandaged palm, before they were back in the open. “Are they looking for you?”

“Yes…”, the kid muttered dejectedly, to which the woman’s irritated scowl morphed into a more skeptical frown. She eyed them head to toe, accessing the nestled rodent with a blatant look of disgust, before her mulling was over.

“I may not like thieves, but I detest brutes. If you’re running away, you will need some food.”

“You're not going to hang me?”, the kid blurted, a little too excitedly.

“What is there to hang? All skin and bones. Aren’t your parents feeding you?”, she scolded. The question was entirely rhetoric, and so she didn’t linger on the subject, as she moved towards the food stashed on the table and began choosing the most appropriate snacks for wanted runaways such as themselves, but those words of no other purpose, other than filling the silence sparked a flame in him.

He was indeed unreasonably skinny.

The kid was an orphan, so it was kind of difficult for his parents to feed him from beyond the grave, but the armada of servants appointed at the prince’s disposal would have to do. Only, during the last couple days, Lilia hadn’t seen a single attendant, other than a dismembered arm delivering a parody of a meal that barely fit the criteria of a regular human, let alone the standards of a royal both in range and quantity. It was impossible not to take note of the child’s slenderness, afterall he’d practically been squeezed over every part of the boy’s body during their little chase, but the fae was only beginning to realize how much it reminded him of the famished refugees of war forced to survive on scraps.

Of course, in the court he’d been familiar with the aristocrats’ habit of self-inflicted starvation in the pursuit of beauty. A beauty distorted by temporary standards, that shifted along with the century. The human court had grown in mimicry to the fae and although it would never manage to reach the prototype’s grandeur, the two shared some features.

He doubted the human king followed any beauty standards of such nature.

An odd feeling rushed over the fae, but the general was quick to push it down, before he’d even recognized what it was, content to be broken out of his trance by the low rumble of the woman’s voice, “Put on some flesh and we'll talk about your hanging then.”

The jest was wasted on her sullen poker face.

“Thank you for the food. And for not hurting my friend. And not telling the guards”, the human beamed, as he accepted the cook’s gift and Lilia thought that that killer combination of sparkling eyes and blinding smile had the same retched effect of him as the morning sun.

The woman stopped the boy before he got the chance to shove the offered food down his jam-filled pockets and instead proceeded to wrap it around a rag and tie it onto the rope circling the boy’s waist. The child nodded gratefully, as he skidded away.

“You’re a weird one.”, was the last thing she said, before the door closed after them and the rush of the night’s breeze greeted them outside. The air had picked up by now, brushing over the bat’s fur pleasantly and Lilia relished in its embrace. The kid seemed similarly pleased to be outside, judging by the way his shoulders dropped and his lips parted to release a relieved sigh.

The moment of respite didn’t last long, before the scrunching patter of boots sinking into moist patches of grass alerted them to the approaching figures. The pale moonlight reflected on their silver ornaments, making them stick out like sore thumbs within the dark green hues of the garden, while Lilia and her human remained perfectly camouflaged under the veil of the night’s shadows.

They still needed to move somewhere safer. The other side of the bailey was significantly less crowded and the thick foliage of the decorative labyrinth would provide them with enough coverage, until the fae figured out a way to pass through the castle’s gate undetected, so the wisest choice would be to make a run for it.

Lilia didn’t get the chance to steer the human towards the desired destination, before the boy had broken into a run, evidently sharing the fae’s thoughts. Telepathy wasn’t included in Lilia’s arcane armory, but he supposed that being in sync came in handy in certain situations.

Jostling aside, the tight grip of the lad, barely left him with enough space to cast an invisibility spell, but in the end, they managed to reach the other end of the labyrinth unnoticed.

Whether it was pacing across the empty field or joining the knight’s daily regime, the prince seemed utterly unaccustomed to physical exercise, as indicated by the labored breaths that slipped past his lips, sporting a similarly flushed color as his cheeks. Lilia didn’t think that this level of exertion was warranted. He’d seen war messengers climb past the baneful peaks of Dread Mountain Range or swim through the treacherous depths of the Coral Sea without breaking a sweat, but humans were renowned for their feeble constitutions. So much in fact, that losing a war against them rubbed further salt into the wound of their defeat.

When the boy finally managed to push through the violent coughing fit that had his body convulsing and rise from his doubled over position, Lilia was able to get a clear view of their surroundings.

He wished the boy had continued hacking until he choked to death.

The fae was far from versed in the arts. Even the most uncultured could recognize music’s appeal, whether that meant basking in the melodic whispers of the taut strings of a psaltery echoing within the banquet hall, or dancing to the cadenced beats of a tabor’s skin drumming from across the festival’s hearth. Falling in love with music was easy. Falling in love with painting was less intrinsic. Whereas music came from the soul, painting came from the mind, and although the symmetry of the shapes and the fusion of the colors stimulated the senses ever so subtly, Lilia had always regarded it as an attempt at emulation, rather than creation. An immortalized fragment of a moment, trapped into a fresco, made to appease its subject in its blatant insincerity, and haunt its spectator in its jarring timelessness. Lilia might not have been fond of the somber portraits of the Draconia line, glaring over the walls of the senate’s council room, but he could recognize the craftmanship that went behind their condescending scowls and -even though begrudgingly- he could acknowledge their purpose.

The hands that moved the brush and strung the chords had always felt man-like to him.

The hands that molded the clay were an entirely different matter.

The only specimens of the art the fae had beholden were the stone statues of the Thorn Fairy placed all over Blackscale castle and the limestone figures of the human gods, placed in every temple the general had reduced to rubbles. The comparison was impious, to even dare associate the holly essence of their benevolent progenitor to the false icons of the mortals was punishable by death, but -in the safe sanctuary of his mind- there was no harm admitting that Lilia felt equally awed by both. The twisting towering horns, the distant stare of eternity, the broken marble heads trampled under the general’s foot, seizing the fae as if he were a speck of dust in the endless beach of time. There was no condescension. Merely the contrast between the divine and the temporary, in which Lilia found himself belonging to the latter.

Sculpture held a gravitas that surpassed truth.

And although there was nothing divine or grandeur about the egg-shaped head staring down at them in all its bald glory, Lilia still felt the same rush of wonder at the sight of the towering statue.

“I've never seen them from so close.”

Kids shouldn’t sound like this, so meek and distant and fragile, and when the fae looked up he decided that kids shouldn’t look like this either, especially not this particular kid in this particular moment, because that tortured expression rubbed the fae in all the wrongs ways.

The boy’s gaze lingered on the knight’s covered face, a helmet made of stone obscuring the unfeeling eyes that plagued Lilia’s nightmares. How tragically ironic that the fae could replicate the exact features of the man he loathed, while his son wouldn’t even recognize the father he longed for, carved as he was, stripped from every speck of humanity, just as Lilia had remembered him.

“Mom...”, he mumbled in that same wretched tone, hushed and probationary, as if testing the word in his tongue.

The statue was meant to depict four figures. Lilia recognized the carved form of the Knight of Dawn kneeling in utter submission to the smug human king, generously portrayed with a lot less weight than the fae remembered him possess, next to which stood the statue of the old king, a smoky face in Lilia’s memories. But when he followed the boy’s gaze to the last statue of the structure, the fae came up empty.

He’d never met that woman. She lacked both the lustful sharpness and the mysterious aura associated with the fae notion of beauty and Lilia didn’t think he’d remember her bland soft face by the morrow, but he supposed she’d be considered pretty by human standards. She was carved almost apart from the men, a little further behind, a shadow to the old king, a ghost to a brother, a proof of the knight’s humanity, pushed aside.

The boy approached slowly, as if lost in a trance, drinking every detail of that plain face with hungry glazed eyes. The bat felt himself being shifted to the left, as his right hand moved towards the statue, freezing short of her marble cloak.

“Do you think they would like me?”

Lilia scoffed, because it hardly mattered whether they would have liked him since they were dead. But every hint of smugness was wiped off his face when the sky broke into a drizzle.

“Sorry, don’t know where that came from.”, the boy mumbled, a broken laugh slipping past his lips, sounding so forced and crooked and wrongwrongwrong and Lilia just laid there in his nest of bandages, staring pathetically as the kid’s eyes leaked all over his flushed face.

Lilia needed them to stop, but the tears kept coming, wayward raindrops landing over his head with complete disregard of his wishes, until the boy was trembling and the bat was shaking along.

“People miss those they have lost.”, he choked out in between dry heaves.

Lilia hadn’t noticed that the boy’s hand had settled on the statue, gripping his mother’s lifeless body like a lifeline, until his palm was violently retracted, as if burnt by her touch, pulled to his sides and then brought to his face in stuttered movements. The bat winced at the rough motions of his hand, pressing and rubbing against his eyelids until the tear trucks had been wiped off existence, leaving his face swollen. The boy swayed back without his marble anchor, willing himself look away, as he broke into a walk.

“I never got to meet them. I have no right to cry.”

What a harsh thing to say. What an undeserved pain to carry at such a young age.

That crying face should have brought him joy. Afterall Lilia had been the one plotting the best ways to maul the child a mere day ago. He was the one dreaming of parading his gutted organs as a prize, composing a song of his horrified screams for him to play on the lyre. But there was not a hint of pleasure rushing past his veins at the Knight of Dawn’s spawn miserable sniffles, a helpless orphan’s tears of yearning.

It wasn’t hard for him to reach the boy’s shaking arm, neither was pulling it away from his face. The eyes staring back at him had all their colors spilled, a watercolor dripping palette, and for a moment Lilia swore he saw a purple tear seeping out those orbs. He’d already been drenched in human saliva once this day, so what was another bodily fluid to his shattered pride?

It didn’t cost him anything to wipe a stray tear.

Because, if anything, the general has always been efficient. They’d wasted enough time wallowing in standstill, while the Silver Owls scanned every nook and cranny of the place.

Between two motherless orphans, one took precedence.

In the brief time he’d known the child, it appeared that the human was more prone to spurs of motivation when content. Sadness was debilitating, his own experience was testament of it. For the shake of his mission, the most optimal route would be to lift the kid’s spirits.

The human had been gracing him with undivided attention, staring at the wing that brushed over his cheek with quiet surprise, a momentary distraction from his sadness. All the fae had to do was prolong that distraction to his favor.

It was most likely the effect of the place on his grief-stricken soul, but another memory he’d thought forever lost in the merciless passage of time, resurfaced.

“What are you doing?”, the child asked, confused words grazing past his hoarse throat, but Lilia didn’t falter. He flapped his wings until he was hovering over the child’s throat, took a deep breath until his nerves were steady enough and then he sliced.

The fabric retreated with ease, as the bat pulled the prince’s cloak around his body, its meager weight posing no problem to his mobility. With three swift movements, Lilia had the child’s hands tied to the cloth, and before the kid managed to get a word out of his gaping mouth, the bat was pulling him away.

“Did you just-” Lilia’s makeshift puppet managed, before the fae let go of one of his arms and pushed away, before tugging the cloth, prying the most awkward dancing pose out of the young prince. Lilia hadn’t expected the human to display any sort of natural inclination to the delicate sway of the waltz, afterall dancing was another type of physical activity which had already been established to be beyond the child’s talents, but those dragging sloppy steps were entirely ridiculous.

The ineptitude did little to deter the bat, as he swirled his little dance partner against the wind, golden locks tangling in its flow, as the pair glided across the slippery patches of the ground, under the silver glow of the moonlight.

And at last, after all the twisting and twirling, the swinging and swerving, Lilia managed to coax a laugh out of the boy. It was far from a raucous sound, but it was still a giggle, soft and gentle as the hum of the wind, the only company of those awake during the lonely hours of the night. The fae basked in its ring, content to have accomplished another mission, the reset of that wretched teary gaze to its original glowing giddiness testament to his success.

“Slow down!”

In the end they were defeated by a mere pebble. The boy, first to drop, was quick to bring the bat along and the two met the ground in a heap of tumbling limbs. Lilia jerked away from the child’s chest, as if its soft flesh vibrating with giggles had burnt him, opting to settle on the grass instead.

“That was just like the garden balls! Never thought dancing would be so much fun. It's just like training, but you don’t need a sword!”, he spluttered and Lilia didn’t feel like letting him know of his incompetence in both activities, “I didn't know bats could dance. You’re the weird one.”

The fae begged to differ, but when a bread bun was passed his way, one of the snacks the scowling cook had packed for them, he was content to remain silent and enjoy the offered meal, back pressed against the ground, eyes locked on the stars, the sound of chuckling retreating like ripples on a river’s surface, as they relished the dark.

“I’ve never been able to see the whole sky from my window. It is huge.”, he said, his voice, although interrupted by the occasional crunch of chewing, betraying nothing but wonder upon the marvel of nature. A child unraveling the world. Lilia’s eyes narrowed, as that unsettling feeling that had clenched his chest earlier moved to seize his gut. There was no way, that was the first time the child had gazed upon the sky outside his window. Because, well, because that would mean-

“Do you think they’re up there watching us from somewhere? Maybe they saw us dancing!”

Every thought evaporated, every hypothesis lost, as a wave of dread crushed him.

What a loathsome notion that was, having her spectate their disgraceful dance. Watching Lilia twirl and bow to the kin of the man who ended her. Guilt came to him like a torrent of sobriety, rousing him from his drunken state of comfort. Suddenly, the distance between them wasn’t wide enough and Lilia felt as if he was pressed against the abhorrent creature’s bare flesh, squeezed between his fingers until his bones crunched and his black soul was bleeding out of his body. Suddenly, he was trapped under the burning light of the stars passing judgment. The night sky he loved so dearly became his cage, turning ever so imperceptibly in that haunting emerald shade until Lilia’s eyes were burning.

“I’m glad I followed you. I know shouldn’t be, but this was the best night of my life.”

Lilia, breathless quaking Lilia, turned to stare at the human for the first time since they fell. He watched the child regard him with nothing but warmth, more warmth he’d ever been met with, more warmth he’d ever deserved. Even when the boy’s gaze moved away from him, settling for the endless horizon of black, facing the stars without a hint of fear in his eyes made of the light shining through a stained-glass window, his kaleidoscopic soul reflected bare within those orbs, the fae continued to stare.

Sometime during his staring, the sky returned to its navy blue and the stars dimmed to their faded glow.

And for the first time Lilia didn’t cower in front of the sunset. He laid his own frightful monochromatic soul bare, breaking the surface of the water. He turned away from the burden of his ghosts’ judgment, focusing on the song of the cicadas and the rustling of the leaves and for once, he wasn’t burnt by the light of the sun.

Before the twillight was ripped from his grip.

Before the guards pulled the kid away.

Chapter Text

After the third sequence of offensive spells came back unsuccessful, Lilia was beginning to think that he may have underestimated the humans.

With the absence of the guards, the fae had been able to breeze past the first line of defense with minimal resistance. The magical barriers placed over the thick iron-clad doors of the first two levels held little challenge for the experienced general and although Lilia’s domain of expertise was more aligned to physical attacks, that had more to do with his personal preferences and less with his arcane abilities, which were no less than impeccable.

An irritated groan slipped past his upturned lips, as another offensive spell died down, fuchsia tendrils of magic fizzling out of existence, to reveal the last gate still standing without so much as a scratch to show for his efforts.

He had come too close to go back empty-handed.

The new occupants of the castle were quick to engrave their filthy presence on every nick and cranny of the place, eager to sully the eternal with their ephemerality. But despite their impertinent adjustments, the place had mostly remained the same. It mattered not if it was dressed in a horrendously cheery palette of white and blue, dipped in morning sky, rather than the everglade’s smoky hues. Nor was it substantial that the silver emblem of the Silver Owls, coating every room and every wall, was giving him the worse migraine assaults.

The important thing was that Lilia recognized the layout of those halls. He knew of every hidden passage, every possible short way, every loophole masked between these walls. And he knew, with unshakeable certainty, that when it came to the retention of valuable artifacts, there was no safer place than the treasury. It was improper to address the next heir meant to ascend the fae throne as a fancy trinket, but no matter the deep-rooted ire the thought triggered, it was true that the egg served little purpose in the hands of the humans, other than that of a glorified war prize.

The fact remained. Malleus was definitely in there.

So, it was a little odd, if not mind-numbingly harrowing, that Lilia’s trained ears had yet to pick up a heartbeat. In the least, his magically attuned senses should have been able to catch a wisp of her magic. She had poured her whole being into the egg’s creation. Last time he held it, well, last time he’d failed to hold to it, Lilia had felt her magic pulsing across the surface, static bolts sending goosebumps across his spine, raising his hackles in military attention.

Now, every strand of hair was dreadfully reclined.

Either the metal lining was affecting him more than he’d originally thought, or the spell-binding curse shrouding the room was just that strong. Another reason wormed its way through his mind, but Lilia banished the morbid thought before its claws had dug deep enough to make him spiral. Scaremongering was a slippery slope to failure and the fae would rather not be bitten by his own snake. The humans had plenty of venomous fangs themselves, he wouldn’t be making their job easier.

He’d focus on the facts and attempt some optimism for once in his miserable life. Afterall despite how ashamed it was to admit it, he’d buy as much time away from her haunting trail as he could, because there was no way he’d be able to focus on breaking any spell with her magic trace breathing down his neck.

However, lack of focus didn’t seem to be the issue, because Lilia was pouring every ounce of magic from his useless carcass, putting every effort into ridding the door of that pesky curse and yet, the metal gate had yet to budge. He took a deep breath, allowing the pendular fuchsia runes, that provided no other use other than an immense improvement of the hall’s decoration, to drop as he moved to a different approach.

Reconnaissance spells were rather hard to perform and Lilia couldn’t help the salty beads of sweat that rolled down his forehead, a few moments after the spell had been activated. They were multilayered spells of several stages, requiring vocal guidance and a specific type of magical object -typically a crystal, because of their abundance and their responsiveness to different castors- but Lilia was past the age to be needing magical aids to channel his power.

The incantation may have been improvised, but the fae knew the fundamentals well enough for it to work and after a prolonged moment of scanning, pink lightning streaks sizzling across the door with the speed of light, the curse was revealed. At last, the spotty orange patterns of the castor’s spell flickered in existence and as Lilia’s eyes skidded past the symbols, dusting off his scanty knowledge of human sigils, his eyes lit in recognition.

Lilia wasn’t expecting to find a conditional curse. Afterall, this type of spells was known to take a heavy toll on the castor, requiring more energy to conjure than regular ones. The less magically gifted species usually steered clear of such rigorous charms. Arcane recovery was more than exhausting to fae, Lilia couldn’t begin to imagine how draining a process it would be for the less inclined humans. The sorcerers in the employment of the Silver Owls had thus far proved themselves no short of impressive, but every hint of marvel was washed out by a sweeping wave of annoyance.

The reason conditional curses were so difficult to place was because they were practically unbreakable.

Hunting down the sorcerer who placed this particular one would amount to nothing. Nullification was not an option, even when the very same mage commanded it, and were they a powerful one, which Lilia could safely assume was true, not even death would make the spell fade away, at least not any time soon. The only way to open the door would be to meet the requirements of the spell.

In this case, a blood sacrifice.

With the way his fangs had been biting down his cheek’s inner slope, Lilia would only have to spit at the door’s face for it to finally slide open, but it wasn’t just anyone’s blood the curse called for. Because that would have been too easy, and Lilia’s luck had always been anything but terrible.

Because the curse called for royal blood.

Henrik’s blood.

His face creased in disgust at the mere thought of that disgrace of a man.

During his current stay at the Wildrose establishment, Lilia had made sure to avoid the king and although it was impossible not to run into him into his own castle, the two of them had only crossed paths a few times, during the majority of which, the bat was being chased across the corridors by a menacing hoard of dusters, rendering the encounter unavoidable.

This game of elusion was somewhat unwarranted, because Lilia hardly thought that egg-shaped skull capable of producing a single thought, much less recognize a masked foe, even if said spy was staring straight at him, but that awfully haughty smile, pressing those fat cheeks until his wide set of eyes was barely visible, was making his blood boil. Lilia feared that if he were to keep meeting that bag of bloated flesh, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from wiping that smug grin permanently.

At least the Knight, despite his own grievances, had had the decency to face his enemies in battle, rather than hide behind the safety of his castle’s walls.

Personal abhorrence aside, the problem remained. There was no way he was getting close enough to Henrik to draw blood. The man was always surrounded by a parade of guards and sorcerers. Approaching him would be a feat on its own but wounding him would take more than a grand scale miracle and the fae had long lost his faith in wonders.

He’d been contemplating the logistics of such an operation when another idea popped into his head, his eyes widening with aspiration.

He didn’t have to reach Henrik. He didn’t have to breach the impregnable dragnet of Silver Owls, craving for a chance to slice off his head. He didn’t even need to attempt it. Not when a much more accessible and totally defenseless blood sack was hanging from the tip of his finger.

Not when Lilia could strike the prince.

The fae swirled into his bat form, his wings fluttering with renewed purpose towards his new destination. The tower.

Despite the lack of resemblance between the two, the same blood flowed through their veins, uncle and nephew, a relation tight enough to vouch for its purity. It would work. It had to.

After the first time in a while, Lilia allowed himself to hope.

Magic came with an inherent tendency for the dramatic, but when it came to blood sacrifices, the red fluid was part of a wider symbolism that included it but wasn’t strictly restricted to it. Of course, every spell varied, and Lilia had no way of knowing to which variable was the curse most likely to respond, but chances were that a strand of hair, or a chipped nail would suffice.

Not that the fae was afraid of facing a little kid, how pathetic would that be? But presenting himself as an enemy fae craving human blood was bound to cause more fuss than he was willing to deal with. Afterall, the child had already foolishly put his complete trust in the hands of the bat, so appealing to him as a friend that accidentally run his nails a little too close to that messy golden mane would be less time-consuming.

And with every speck of sand sliding over the curve of the hourglass towards dawn, time was of the essence.

The doors closed behind him, sealed off with a spell of his own, one that would easily throw off the sorcerers were they to return to their posts prematurely, as the bat searched for an opening. As if orchestrated by a divine hand, after a rather sloppy turn towards the keep’s main corridor, a window popped at the other end of the hall.

Lilia was quick to rush towards it, eager to reach the tower as soon as possible, lest the chaos of his distraction died down and the guards turned their eyes back to the egg, but just when he’d almost reached it, the gentle breeze of the late night tingling his nostrils, the rhythmic patter of steps echoed from the intersecting corridor. The bat barely managed to prevail over his momentum, before he was scrambling towards the rafters of the ceiling, squeezing himself behind a wooden rod until the enemy had passed.

The fae had learnt to expect the shrill clank of armor, the heavy drop of metal steps, the dragged groan of a soldier on duty, but none of that came. Instead, Lilia found himself unintentionally eavesdropping to the hushed whispers of the maids.

“I'm telling you, they're trying to keep it under wraps to keep us calm and docile, but I know a secret when I see one.”, the tall one mumbled, managing to yell while keeping her annoyingly pitched voice below a whisper.

The fae was familiar with the idle gossip of the servants. He’d come to associate it with the backstabbing battlefield of the Draconia court, a weapon in the artillery of the nobles in a cold war of their own making, but during the war, stranded in the camp with his own troops, he’d realized the fae’s penchant for snide chatter wasn’t privy to the circles of aristocracy. The great fae general of the right himself was guilty of indulging in it. Not by spreading gossip, fates forbid, his status and character was beyond finding pleasure in petty rumors and wrecked reputations, but keeping an ear out in that self-made web of spies had come in handy more than a few times.

He doubted that was the case now, afterall Lilia had no knowledge of the power balance games in the human court, but from his trapped position overhearing was the only option available.

“Why do you think every guard is on edge? Why do you think the king is missing? Why do you think everyone avoids the subject when we ask?”, the fae cocked an eyebrow as the maids’ leisure walk came to a halt, the task of changing the silk sheets they were carrying entirely forgotten in the noble pursuit of blabber. With the way they mumbled, heads darting left and right suspiciously, one might have thought they were discussing affairs of the state. “Why do you think they’re keeping it locked away?”

His ears perked up at the last part, his interest piqued. Could they be talking about the-

“It’s because of the plague.”

The bat blinked incredulously, anticipation morphing into disappointment.

“What?”, the other woman spoke, in a disbelieving tone the fae thought utterly appropriate.

“There's been a plague outbreak and they're trying to stop it before it spreads!”, the first maid continued, abandoning any attempt to keep her voice down for the shake of screeching her unlikely conspiracy theory like any reasonable individual would. Succumbing to his urges, even if that meant burying his face in his palms to quench a smidge of his brimming exasperation had already proved to be catastrophic, but his patience was running low and a headache -completely unrelated to silver proximity, for once- was slowly creeping his way, so Lilia allowed himself a small indulgence.

“That’s why Luddy disappeared! She's been locked in that room for ages and whenever I pass by”, the tall woman motioned for the other to lean, “I can hear her vomit.”

“That’s because Luddy is pregnant.”

There was no way Lilia was going to waste any more of his precious time listening to plague allegations, or worse, Luddy’s mystical life, so with a swift drop the bat breezed over the girls’ heads, passing the finish line of darkness just before the hall behind him erupted in shrieks.

The sky had yet to break with the vivid colors of the dawn, but the dark indigo he’d been facing mere hours ago was already succumbing to a lighter shade of blue, the stars’ earlier haunting glow dimming to match the washed background. He flew carefully, on the lookout for any early rising grackles, lest the traumatic events of a few days prior repeated themselves and he found himself with another problem to deal with, but when all he managed to spot was the flickering flames of torches moving across the bailey like bustling fireflies swarming the forest, he abandoned every notion of caution and picked up his speed.

The harsh light spilling over the tower’s window made the pointed tile-roof appear almost suspended, a blazing sun in the midst of fading stars. He had spotted no candles during his stay in the room, which could only mean the prince was being paid a visit.

So, he might have been tremendously annoyed, but he wasn't surprised to find that hairless pig of a king swinging a condescending finger around, his entourage of servants barely fitting in the narrow space of the room. Lilia’s rolling eyes lingered on another figure and its familiar golden hair.

The kid was so close, face turned away from Lilia, back hunching in the over the nearest corner of the room, arms wrapped around his body, leaving that messy bob of gold defenseless. It would only take a push for the bat to reach his head He'd thought the night would provide him with enough cover from the corner of the window, but when one of the men who surrounded a king, a mage judging by the flowing sphere of light that hovered over his rod snapped his head towards the window, the general deemed it safer to not challenge his luck.

It would only take a push for the bat to reach him and another one to escape with the snatched strand of hair and then Lilia would finally be able to leave this haunting hell of memories and return the Draconia heir to his family.

But the moment he stepped into the light of the room, abandoning the safety of the night’s cloak of darkness for the shake of floating over the unglazed sill, a row of heads snapped his way in jarring synchronization. Neither guards nor sorcerers seemed to recognize him, otherwise they would be doing a lot more than staring, but they didn’t seem keen to discard him either, and after a few moments under their scrutiny, the general deemed it wiser to not challenge his luck, deciding to wait outside, his back against the bricks, his eyes to the sky, his feet perched on the curve of the sill.

He'd have to wait until the spoiled prince had received his lecture.

“We've been over this nephew”, the two-legged pig said, their relation spat like a curse. It appeared that apart from the wait, Lilia would also have to withstand their conversation. How great.

“You know you are forbidden from leaving this room. It's the only condition I ever set for you. Just the one. And you go and trample it without a care in the world!”, he continued and the fae had to wince at the sheer volume of that nasal scream.”

The implications made him pause, but he wasn't one to jump to conclusions. For all he knew that spoiled brat had wrecked enough havoc to warrant a couple days of isolation. If Lilia was put in charge of one of the entitled tykes of the court, he'd be more than happy to ditch them in the woods permanently. When he was still a youth himself, he'd been locked away more times than he could count on digits of both hands and feet particularly for mistakes that weren't his in the first place, but that was as irrelevant today as it was back then.

“I'm really s-sorry. I didn't m-mean any dis- disresc-”

“Can you get through the sentence?!”, the fae jumped at the interruption. He could sympathize with the frustration that came with stuttering. Back in the throne room, when the kid was making the same pathetic choked sounds, the bat had been at his limit as well, though he had resorted to an eye roll rather than that ear-splitting dog bark, but he supposed that the prince’s uncle knew how to appeal to his nephew better than a random stranger did. “Gods what have I ever done to be burdened with you? You can't even speak properly, you can't obey rules and that smell... are you an animal?”

Weren’t there tutors to teach the young prince refined speech and etiquette? Weren’t there servants assigned to bathe and clothe him? Wasn’t there a different hiding spot for him to wait, away from those words, that made his chest clench with this awful feeling?

“I'm sorry uncle.”, the boy muttered, a meek sound that barely reached the bat’s ears, but the accompanying sniffle echoed loud and clear, and Lilia recognized the familiar method of appeal for what it was.

It had taken too long for that brat to act like a royal but in the end, the prince had revealed his true colors. Afterall, crocodile tears were always the sprinkle on top of a persuasion attempt, a full proof path to a guardian’s defenseless heart. Lilia had always given credits where credits were due and it was true that the brat had almost convinced him with that teary broken whisper of his, but it would take a spectacular display of emotional manipulation to fool him! He'd fallen victim to a royal’s tricks more times than he'd be comfortable admitting, and he refused to add to that number.

The fae just hoped that the stupid king wasn’t as perceptive, so that the show would be over sooner rather than later, with a stern warning, a reconciling pat on the back and some type of sugary candy stuffed into the kid's mouth, leaving the field clear for him.

“I'll only ask once so try to keep your focus on me for this one time.”, the man demanded, entirely unconvinced of the boy’s little act, “Who was the guard that let you out?”

A grin split the bat’s face in half. The king had no way of knowing that the one releasing the prince from his most certainly temporary imprisonment was their nation’s greatest enemy and the fae would very much like to keep it this way. His shortsighted mind must have immediately flown to another human, a threat stretching its vines in his own court, pulling strings behind his back, acting against his orders for the shake of a prince that had every claim to his throne, a child that could easily replace him were he to amass the right supporters. Afterall, the quickest way to overthrow a king was by gaining the favor of someone of his blood and to the fae’s knowledge, Henrik had neither a wife nor children of his own.

Lilia might have detested the drama back in the court of the dragons, when hunting down conspirers against the crown and cutting down their throats had been his duty, but here, free of the arduous task of pulling out the weeds before they infected the rest of the crops, the king’s seething rage brought him nothing but entertainment.

“No one let me out.”, the boy murmured confusedly.

“So, you expect me to believe that the door opened on its own free will?”, he fumed, a monsuvial storm of agitated footsteps thundering over creaking wooden floorboards -for which the fae held nothing but pity and immense respect- as the king paced the room. Lilia’s smile widened, relishing in the man’s discomfort, as the boy’s perplexed stammers provided continued to provide no culprit for the imaginary betrayal.

“I d-don't know how it opened, but I'm telling the truth. There was no one outside-”

And then the downpour of steps came to a halt and Lilia heard it.

The distinct sound of slapping.

And every stroke of joy painting his face into the most luminous picture of delight vanished.

His body moved before he had time to think of the persistently observant entourage of the king, still crowding the room. He didn’t even spare them a fraction of his attention when he came crashing against the inner windowsill, claws digging hopelessly into the steady pillars of stone, lest his momentum made him topple onto the room’s solid stone walls for the umpteenth time, because the moment Lilia took the scene, really took the scene, his focus was monopolized by two points of interest.

Henrik’s fuming face creased in palpable rage, sporting a similar shade to a ripe tomato, with a few splashes of blue here and there from all the popping veins, three-dimensional rivers flowing down his neckline that shuddered with hot ire and the kid. The kid that was lying on the floor on all fours. The kid that was breathing to the beat of a war drum. The kid that was biting back sobs until his chest was trembling. The kid that was cradling his stricken cheek like his life depended on it.

“You dare lie in my face after everything I've done for you? I clothed and fed you. I've raised you from the kindness of my heart for my poor sister's shake and this is how you repay me? By lying to me?!”, that man continued to sputter, claims of benevolence and kindness ringing in a muffled haze of words, as if the bat’s head had been plunged underwater. The only sound that echoed across his thick skull with astound clarity, penetrating the dense water walls and breaking the frequency of those mute bubble sounds, were the dry heaves of the child’s labored breaths.

Fear was staining those watery eyes shining in the most horrid shades of purple, as if all the wilted violets of the late fall and the dead butterflies that had passed away from cold, had been squeezed into a cracked glass of wine made of rotten grapevines, forsaken to be harvested long after their time.

Suddenly, every piece in this awful puzzle of jagged parts clicked and Lilia had run out of excuses.

“I'm not lying.”, the boy insisted. The hand pressing against his cheek moved to brace his knee, an unsteady prop of support to aid the wobbly rise on his feet, leaving his face unprotected and Lilia’s unblinking eyes unshielded by the nasty view. The fae had spent three eons getting the hang of breathing, but now, staring at those burning red marks spreading from the boy’s chin all the way to his ear, barely missing that cursed leaking eye of his, assuming the distinct shape of fingers, bright red shifting to a deep crimson where the king’s rings had dug into the soft flesh, it appeared that his lungs had suddenly forgotten how.

“Some brainless oaf thinks I can be replaced! Someone among my men is trying to usurp me and you dare withhold their name?” Henrik raged, a drop of his acidic spit landing straight into the kid’s forehead, earning no response other than a wince.

“I don't understand...”, the kid finally managed, his terrified eyes flashing with raw desperation for this interrogation to stop, for his words to be believed, for that man to quit looming over him like a predator cornering wounded prey.

A sweeping wave of guilt crashed over him, a feeling so vile and coarse, a lightning bolt tearing through the hazy fog of his usual dampened regret, filling his core with enough self-hatred to fit an entire ocean. He was the one that had gotten the kid out, he was the one that had sought to use him, he was the reason he was getting beat up for crying out wolf, and there he was standing idly in the comfort the darkness provided, watching from the sidelines as the scene unfolded.

Again.

He shook his head, banishing those ridiculous thoughts, along with that foolish unentitled feeling. He wouldn’t spring into action at the Knight of Dawn son’s defense, the concept was entirely unfathomable. He shouldn’t care whether the human heir, imprisoned and starved, bullied and shamed, lived to see another day. In fact, he’d only managed to get roped into this mess because he’d been trying to protect her heir, the future fae prince, his sworn ruler, their nation’s greatest enemy.

There was no duty tying him to the weak child trembling with fear, only a long history of loathing whose final chain led here. But no matter how hard he tried, Lilia could conjure not a wisp of hatred, no wish for demise when he stared at that set of bleeding twilight eyes.

“At least your pathetic excuse of a father knew when to shut his mouth and obey.”

The fae blanched, his eyes widening in two pools of blood drowning into galaxies of black sclera, as he turned towards the child’s face and watched the fear ebb away, replaced by the same spark of stubborn defiance he’d mustered when facing the cook’s swinging broom. But, this time, instead of a hardheaded pastry chef with a softness for underage criminals, the kid was facing an entitled and very much violent ruler armed with an actual sword, rather than a cleaning accessory, surrounded by a cult of people that had sworn to obey his every whim. It was not the time nor the place for belated strikes of rebellion and reckless displays of bravery, that were going to get him killed and Lilia found himself wishing for that debilitating fear to return, when a mere night ago he’d been cursing its very presence.

His breath hitched when the child's mouth opened, his prayers to just shut up, falling on deaf ears, as always.

“My father wasn't pathetic! He was a hero, and you can’t speak of him like that!”

The boy had little time to move out of the way before those greasy fat fingers were latched into his hair, pulling his head so abruptly Lilia thought it would be torn from his body.

“You dare talk back to me! Oh, it seems I've neglected your education for far too long. I'll teach you a lesson on discipline you insolent brat!”

That monster of a man didn’t let go, instead he sped up those sharp painful motions, dangling the child’s head left and right, until his face had turned an alarming shade of green and his shrieks of anguish had turned to gut curdling sobs. He was as close to vomiting as the kid seemed to be, burying his claws into the impenetrable surface of stone deep enough to hurt.

Why wasn’t anyone stopping this? Why weren’t the guards rushing at the side of their prince? Why were they letting the son of their hero suffer like this? Why did Lilia have to suffer like this?

The crowd of bystanders made of guards and sorcerers sworn to the crown’s service was as unaffected at the sight as horse would have been at the sight of a horsefly, a bunch of trained soldiers standing idly, too busy yawning and stretching while a child was getting mauled right in front of them. Lilia wished to collect their guts one by one, have them stitched into a man-made noose, and choke that bastard king with it.

The horrid sound of retching snapped his attention back at the kid that was now heaving against the floorboards, remnants of his dinner spreading across the floor, the king’s hands withdrawn as if burnt.

“I’m r-really sorry…”, the kid whispered, a brittle hushed sound that made the fae’s frozen heart warm just enough to break.

“You ruined my shoes! Useless brat, is it so hard for you to stop causing trouble for one fucking moment!” Henrik roared, moving to grasp the kid’s head once again, his palm still coated with the blond strands he’d pulled hard enough to snap from their roots, and Lilia found himself flying towards that extended palm with the intention of biting until he tasted bone, when he was overtaken by a flurry of colors.

The rainbow blast shot past him like a spring breeze, ruffling his hair in its wake, causing him to pause briefly in his tracks. But after a moment of blinking, the whirlpool of colors cleared, assuming the feathery shapes of five fussing bluebirds crossing the room in an impeccable display of triangular battle formation, heading straight to Henrik’s bald head. Blue, the leader of the flock, chirped what sounded to Lilia like a military order and the flying troops descended, their weapons turned against the enemy and whether it were beaks digging into bloated flesh or talons aiming at exposed eyeballs, the fae saw little difference between his own men’s spears and swords and the animals’ artillery, when both produced the same tantalizing result. The agonizing screams of an adversary being defeated.

It didn’t take long before the entirety of Henrik’s entourage was trying to shake the birds off from their king’s ugly mug that hadn’t turned any less atrocious with all those added nicks and scratches, but it also didn’t take long for the war machine of five to shift its target to the rest of the humans, making no discrimination over guards and sorcerers alike, whose weapons proved useless in the face of the lilliputian foes. However, entranced as he was with the impressively synchronized strategy of the attack, the fae failed to notice how its expansion left their main target unmarked until it was too late.

Until the dull thud of a collision blared over the mayhem and the sonic chaos of chirping and screaming came to a halt.

Lilia hadn’t realized how grounding the beat of those labored shaky breaths had been until it disappeared.

And suddenly time had frozen all over again, the last speck of sand suspended over the lower half of the hourglass, as the fae took in the sight of the kid laying limb against the wall, a steady stream of blood leaking out of the deep oozing red wound imprinted on his forehead.

Lilia didn’t hear the satisfied groan of the king as he dusted off his shoe coated with his nephew’s blood. He didn’t hear the songbirds’ distressed tweeting, as they abandoned the defeated soldiers and settled for the boy’s unmoving shoulders. He didn’t hear Henrik barking out a harsh reprimand to his embarrassed escort before exiting the room, nor did he catch the piercing snap of the door rattling against its hinges. And during that prolonged moment of silence Lilia felt like he’d never been able to hear anything ever again, not the howling of the wind as he tore the sky, nor the ring of her voice when a nightmare torn him from inside, for the mere concept of sound evaded him.

Until Lilia saw those small, parted lips withdraw ever so slightly for the tiniest breath of air to enter the kid’s mangled body and then the fae was moving, snapped out of his trance.

His flight broke into a run, as pale arms tore the muscles of his wings, black web-like membrane turning to dust, feet stretching past those useless animal talons, before he came crashing to the ground, his knees taking the fall of his body’s momentum. There wasn’t a moment to waste, and certainly not one to spare on a smooth landing.

He grabbed the child’s head in his hands, obsidian fingertips sliding over the back of that golden crown of hair, patting at the soft skin of the skull in the lookout for injuries. Other than a few bruises that were turning the same distasteful color as the kid’s miserable eyes he looked relatively fine.

Speaking of eyes, those amethyst jewels remained hidden behind heavy eyelids, demonstrating no desire to reveal themselves, despite the fae’s ministrations. He refused to ponder on the lack of resistance from the kid, deciding to view those alarmingly prolonged moments of unconsciousness as something positive, because looking for wounds would be way more difficult had the child been thrashing against the grip of the evil fae trying to drink his blood, or whatever nonsense his species was supposed to indulge in those preposterous human works of fiction called fairytales.

His palms moved to the front of the child’s head, a sharp thumb brushing over the darkening mark of fingers imprinted over the tender cheek with utmost care, lest he aggravated the damage.

Simultaneously healing two injuries would take too much of a toll on the child and with no signs of stirring, Lilia would be risking sending him to an eternal comatose state of slumber. The wound that posed the most danger would have to take precedence, so the fae moved his hands to the boy’s forehead, brushing the matted blood drenched strands out of the way, before applying a steady amount of pressure on the center of the gash.

One of the kid’s companions perched his shoulder, a nervous yellow bird, that the boy would have most likely in his typical name-giving fashion, called something along the lines of Yellow. Said Yellow pecked the fae’s exposed neck, a calculated soft blow that barely stung, serving as a warning.

As if Lilia was planning to flounder something as simple as a healing spell.

Fushia rays of light slipped past his fingers’ crevices, sinking the room in a vibrant shade of pink as the fae’s magic pulled the torn skin and stitched it together. The process took longer than Lilia had anticipated, the wound deeper than he’d originally thought, but the spell was completed without complications, and although it did serve its assigned purpose, mending the area below the fae’s glittering hands, it didn’t remove the thick clots of blood that spilled over his face making him look paler in contrast.

Lilia’s sleeve did, and after some slow circular motions of rubbing, the kid’s face had been so spotless there was no way of telling he’d ever been hurt. Well, at least apart from the blood dripping hair and the lingering bruise on his cheek and the fact that he still refused to wake up.

The fae’s eyes narrowed, his slim black eyebrows furrowing in a blend of annoyance and distress. There was no reason for the human to keep sleeping, like some sort of cursed damsel waiting for a fated kiss, that would never come, because if the best chances of the prince’s survival laid in Lilia’s hands then they could safely assume that there would be no noble hero on a white horse coming for the little one, much less an actual physician ordered to examine the kid by s remorseful king.

Lilia was the child’s safest bet and wasn’t that just a terrifying thought…

“Look at me.”, the fae commanded, his voice coming out harsh and sharp, the low pitch of the general carrying out a mission, as he shook the kid’s shoulders, “Come on, nap time is over! Just look at me.”, he continued, his growing distress drowning every ounce of the previous annoyance, for Lilia had shaken all the birds away with his rough handling and caused the kid’s unpropped head to dangle along with those abrupt movements, and yet the boy had yet to show any sign of consciousness.

How embarrassing for the Knight of Dawn’s son to die like this. How bothersome and vexing.

But just as Lilia was leaning his head towards the boy’s chest, eager to catch any proof of life from that unresponsive corpse of a child, he paused as a splash of purple entered his peripheral vision, his attention snapping to fluttering eyelashes. The fae didn’t bother to suppress the sigh of relief that dropped from his dark lips. He was far too drained and way too tired to allow something as irrelevant as shame to claw its way into his soul. Afterall, he needed to make himself scarce, lest the boy gained enough conscience to freak out over the weird looking stranger trespassing his room.

Lilia was already propped on one knee, shifting his weight to stand, when he felt the subtlest tug of his cloak towards the ground.

His eyes snapped at the source, fully prepared to slam whatever color bird had deemed it a good idea to block his path, but there was no vibrant shade of feathers at the other side of his vision.

Only an ocean of glazed purple staring over half-lidded slits.

And suddenly Lilia couldn’t swallow properly, because of that impenetrable lump blocking his throat and all that fluttering mouth of his seemed able to articulate was a hitched wordless breath, as the kid continued to stare at his fae form, prickly fangs and pointy ears in full view. Lilia expected the same fear the boy had worn mere moments earlier, but the expression stretching over the human’s face was a blank unreadable mask of apathy, as if he was looking through him rather than at him and although the lack of reaction should have brought him relief, Lilia’s eyes creased with something akin to worry.

And then the kid’s mouth opened and said the least thing the fae had expected.

“Mom.”, he stated, because that was what it was, a statement. There was no doubt coating the word, no second thought passing behind those foggy orbs, as the human’s small fist clenched deeper against his cloak, and Lilia, the same Lilia that mere hours ago had sworn the bland face of the woman’s mother to oblivion, conjured the image of the marble statue and failed to see the resemblance.

He leaned towards the child, his fingers struggling to disentangle the misleadingly soft grip without hurting the human with those impractically long nails of his when another small hand moved to cling onto his sleeve.

“D-don't go... please I don’t want to b-be alone…”

Lilia stared at the child, lost in a world of his own, refusing to let go of the fae’s ash painted hands soaked in his own blood, refusing to acknowledge the obvious fae features decorating Lilia’s form, refusing to abide to the stranger’s gentle shaking as if holding on to the fae had been the most natural thing.

Lilia couldn’t shake the feeling of being trapped in a dream.

Every ounce of common sense evaporated once he found himself caught in the trenches of twilight, the last wall of his defenses succumbing as if it was made of paper, rather than years’ worth compressed regret, as he wrapped his arms around the stubborn child and pulled him towards his chest, not close enough to rest on it, but close enough for his meek weight to be supported.

He still retained enough presence of mind not to let the boy nuzzle into his neck, despite the child’s desperate attempts shifting from grabby weak motions to crocodile tears, correctly recognized this time, as the two of them moved towards the bed.

The birds had helpfully pulled the covers for him, but when the fae attempted to lower the boy onto the soft surface of the mattress, he coiled against Lilia’s chest, his weak limbs wrapping around his waist with a firmness the fae didn’t think him capable of, a sheep fighting not to be left on the sacrificial altar. In the end Lilia would either have to dislodge every finger clutching the creased fabric of his shirt, as if the kid’s life depended on their ability to hold on or succumb to his fate.

A fate oddly aligned with that human’s habit of caging him.

Lilia hadn’t lied in a proper bed in what felt like centuries, so it didn’t surprise him when he found himself melting onto the comfort of the bed sheets. The kid shifted briefly before settling with his back pressed against his side, his hand abandoning the dusty fabric of his cloak, opting for one of the longer strands of his ponytail, a red one that turned a deeper shade of crimson, tainted by the wayward splotches of blood coating the child’s hands.

The general had shed too much of that vital fluid to begin cringing from it now, but the smell of copper left a bad taste in his mouth.

The fae’s attempts to put some distance between them only managed to reduce his space on the bed, because for every withdrawing movement of his body, the human nuzzled deeper into him, closing the gap with that soft squishy flesh. And how soft it was. In his drunk state of fatigue Lilia found himself running the back of his fingers against those pale patches of skin, marveling at its cotton smoothness. As if the first blossoms of the season had been woven into by the morning’s fluffiest clouds. It would be so easy to break the skin’s surface in the child’s defenseless state, but the mere thought brought him a wave of discomfort.

It was both too late and too early for his dramatic hypocrisies, so Lilia decided to resign his struggle and make himself comfortable on the bed, until the human succumbed in the lulling pull of sleep. When his breathing had evened out and the grasp on his hair had loosened enough to pry the trapped strands away, Lilia would leave.

The fae wouldn’t be surprised to find the kid to be in possession of mind-reading powers, because the moment his decision crystalized in his mind, the human snuggled deeper into his plank of a chest, nestling against his leather armor as if it had been the coziest pillow in the world. A sigh escaped the general, as he shot a hopeless glare at the curled little animal drooling over his shiny vambrace, and for the first time he felt his age catching up with him.

The first rays of the peeking sun slipped past the window, painting the room with the soft colors of the early dawn, a warm stream of light brushing over the fae’s cheek, sweetening the sharp angles of his face, turning his slitted eyes into a velvety cherry hue. He could think of worse cages to be.

The thought of his semi-finished mission barely registered over the dragging spell of fatigue that was pressing against his eyelids. Afterall, there was no calming drum of a heartbeat, seeping past that cold metal door, no gentle huffs of snoring, echoing past the thick tendrils of his magic, no soft hands anchoring him to the present. There was only that insurmountable pressure of duty and of hope, weighing down his tired soul.

Perhaps the world wouldn’t collapse if he took an early reprieve, no matter how undeserved it was.

Perhaps it was okay to close his eyes and bask at the lulling sound of the human’s even breaths. Perhaps it wasn’t so wrong to allow himself to be embraced by the twilight for a moment longer. Perhaps the sun of the day wouldn’t burn his skin in this saccharine world of dreams.

But, when those garnet eyes fluttered up, more than a moment had passed and Lilia was met with the sun,

and the glistening tip of a silver sword.

“Who are you?”

Chapter Text

Lilia was familiar with the instinctual response of fight or flight, occurring when exposed to a threat, perceived or concrete, and though the psychological reaction was supposed to be uncontrollable by nature, the way one could not suppress a shiver from running down their spine or a sneeze from tingling at the edge of their nose, during the war the general had never been granted the privilege to flee. Circumstances could shape even the most automated reactions with habit turning into the most splendid sculptor, chiseling one’s character from the clay of routine.

He couldn’t remember a time when survival didn’t depend on his ability to fight.

His earliest images, disconnected fragments of a hazy dream too muddled to be pieced into proper memories, compiled a mangled yarn of violence. A fae child with bloody hands and an empty stomach wandering endlessly across unknown lands.

For the briefest moments, he might have bought in the childish hope knit by the snowy roof of the clouds casting their soft shadows over Wildrose castle, the home of his youth, perhaps he’d been convinced that he could unlearn to sleep with his eyes open, that he could forget silencing his breathing at the rustling of the leaves or reaching for his scabbard at the pattering of footsteps. But there was no use for a dog who refused to dig up rabbits and his benefactors may have claimed themselves generous but the fae had never considered them to be naive.

So, Lilia had learnt to punch before asking questions and slice before the sliced got the time to slice back. He was a fighter through and through, because despite gaining some meager inches and a scant amount of weight, some things would always be the same.

Only now, as he reached for his bottomless reserves of fight for the will to live, there was not a smidge of resistance left in him, and the fae had long abandoned the hope for an escape. Because there was nowhere to flee from the sun when its blinding rays ran their invasive fingers over his broken heart.

Because there was no shade under the leafless trees of a burned forest and the pure clouds of his youth poured ash upon his face, as the brewing sky erupted in flames.

“I said who are you?”

Lilia had always felt uncomfortable in the presence of the morning star, but now he found himself chasing its warmth, as that boring unfeeling glare made his blood run cold.

“How did you get in?”

The voice echoed within the confines of his mind, but the man’s mouth remained shut, a tight line betraying neither thought nor emotion, stretching below that set of mulberry eyes. A strike of lightning lit the sky, a silver blast blinding his eyes, tearing through the black smokey clouds until the heavens cried, but when the fae recovered from the initial shock of the night turning into day, the man continued to loom above him in his ethereal state, and Lilia thought he’d never met a human looking so much like a fae.

“What do you want?”

He screamed and yet that tight line didn’t budge. He looked like a porcelain doll dressed in silver armor, a clump of hay woven in his sculp. And then that shining knight of death descended his silver blade and Lilia watched him lunge and almost float in the air, turning into a blazing shooting star aiming at his heart, and all the petrified fae could do as that burning Fury came closer and closer was wrap his hands around an empty space and shut his eyes as he counted the moments towards his end.

“Answer me!”, the voice rang more desperate now, a pitchy nervous sound the fae would have never attributed to that blazing meteor of a man. But when his eyes fluttered open, blinking until surroundings cleared, there was not a knight in sight, there was only just child.

Lilia swallowed past the thick lump of his throat, his fists releasing the stretched cotton sheets from his crushing grip, as he forced himself to breathe. He ran his hands across his hair, busying himself with a futile attempt of taming any wayward strands sticking out of his loosened ponytail in similar fashion to the brim of a scarecrow’s hat, until the pathetic wheezing sounds that made his chest convulse with the force of an earthquake had calmed enough for him to form coherent thoughts.

It’s been a while since he’s had such a vivid nightmare, but then again, it’s been a while since he’d allowed himself to sleep for that exact same reason. Lilia had been subjected to a lot of rough wake-up calls throughout his life, from the freezing squeeze of a dragon tail coiling around unsuspected feet to the sharp sting of an arrow missing his heart by an inch, but at that exact moment, he decided that being violently dragged out of reliving his worse memory, by the spawn of its instigator easily topped it all.

He cursed at whatever had possessed him to lower his guard enough to fall asleep. The plan had been to rest his eyelids until the clinging koala had stopped, well, clinging over him, which had already been a detour from the original plan to pop into the prince’s room while the buzz of his disappearance was still coursing through the halls, grab a piece of him and run back to free Malleus.

Instead, the heir was still very much imprisoned below several enchanted gates of steel, while Lilia was sporting the worse bed hair of the century, staring at the face of his nightmares, trying to stave off a persistent headache.

“No.”, he grunted, grimacing at the sound of his own voice. His tongue rolled over his chapped lips, offering brief relief. Sleep always made him feel so unrested.

“What?”, the kid blurted dumbfoundedly, clearly not expecting a refusal. Peeking between knotted strands of a similarly disarrayed bed head, his light lavender eyes reflected the shine of the sun, slipping in the otherwise dark room from the gap of the window, his upturned lips pulled high enough to reach that tiny nose of his, a chaos of emotions so unlike the unfeeling mask haunting his memories. The fae’s eyes darted across every inch of that round face, truly taking in the exaggerated features of the stressed child, only to find less similarities than he’d hoped to.

His headache was worsening.

“I said no!”, he snapped, forcing his voice -rusted from all the years’ unuse- to the commanding tone of the general that left no room for debate.

He needed to leave as soon as possible, lest the brat chose to act sensibly for once in his life and alert the guards to his presence. He hadn’t noticed the birds lounging over his shoulders before they were fluttering away, scared by the abrupt stuttered movements of the fae. Lilia threw his legs over the edge of the bed, uncaring of the complaining creak of his bones screaming at him to stay in bed.

He’d grown tired of the screaming, whether it was his limbs, still numb with sleep, drained after spending so long within the tight confines of a bat’s form, or his head screaming at him to move that useless body of his and finish his damn mission, or those nightmares screaming at him to stop trying lest he made things worse. As if that was even an option at this point.

The cluster of internal shouting was becoming unbearable and the added screaming of his heart as Lilia’s eyes trailed on the red marks staining the human’s face didn’t make him feel any better.

It appeared the kid had taken a few steps back at the fae’s sudden movements, his survival instincts -that the general had thought nonexistent up until now- finally kicking back. The rainbow flock of feathers had moved to nestle against the soft flesh of his shoulders -a vast improvement from Lilia’s plated armor-, their blue feathered leader opting to perch on the tip of the wooden practice sword cradled on the kid’s hands.

But wood didn’t shine the way silver did, and the child was shaking like a leaf, his resolve weakening under the fae’s scrutiny.

“I'm not going to explain myself to you. What are you going to do about it human?”, he leered, a wicked fanged grin splitting his face, as he leaned towards the shaking prince, his forehead stopping a breath away from meeting his toy sword.

“You're in my room. You were sleeping on my bed.”, the boy reasoned, sounding unsure even to himself, “You have to answer me.”

“Or what?”

“O-οr I'll fight you.”

Lilia remembered the last time he’d laughed with striking clarity. The memory was still fresh, but in truth, the general thought it would take centuries to forget the incident with all the shame it brought to his once boasting pride -that had taken more than a few blows within the past couple of days. The momentary lapse in his composure had been triggered by the human’s ridiculous attempt to fit an entire pile of tarts within his pockets, and the sound he’d released, though unbecoming, had been earnest.

There was nothing earnest about the dry humorless laugh that tore through his throat like nails dragging across a wall, and the wince it elicited out of the poor boy brought him even less joy.

It didn’t change the fact that the kid threatening to brandish his sword against him, the knight’s spawn -a detail he seemed to conveniently discard whenever this set of lilac skies threatened to swallow him- would have been dead had it not been for Lilia. And in the end, maybe he should have left him to die because his pallid corpse wouldn’t be digging his paws across Lilia’s open wounds.

Suddenly the fae was able to spot more similarities.

“Do you even know how to use a sword?”, he mocked and though the kid’s stance did straighten, his small voice didn’t echo any more confident than the last time.

“I am to be a knight. I've been training...” by myself in this room with no real sword or real swordmaster other than the disembodied instructions of a man standing too far to see, Lilia’s mind supplied.

“What are you waiting for, knight.”, the fae bit back, his husky voice dripping poison, as he continued to lurk over the kid, even as he rose to his feet, following the timid steps of the backtracking boy until they led them to the wall.

“You're supposed to stick the opponent with the pointy end.” Lilia whispered condescendingly, flicking his hand at some color bird that had been foolish enough to tug his hair, as his head titled over said pointy end low enough to rest on it, his towering body leaving the kid with no choice other than merge with the wall.

It appeared that the same instinctual response that had welcomed him into the waking world had now cast its inescapable spell on the child, that was currently frozen in place gawking at the fae with the biggest eyes Lilia had ever seen, large enough to mirror his projected scowl like a water’s surface painted red at the reflection of the blood moon. Every one of the unique watercolor strokes faded and all the fae could see was his own boiling pools of crimson anger.

“Stop looking at me with those eyes and fight!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to stare.”, the boy murmured, shrinking on himself ever so slightly, as he veered his gaze to the floor. Lilia’s hand twitched possessed by the incomprehensible need to tilt the kid’s chin up, to chase the sunset and make sure it hadn’t been contaminated by his lifeless red, the thought of never meeting that amalgam of purples, pinks and blues oddly affecting him more than he’d ever admit, but the boy’s piercing stare was back at him in all its twilight glory and Lilia felt a disconcerting rush of relief.

“Do I know you?”, he asked, his brows furrowing in concentration, “I don’t remember meeting you, but your eyes are oddly familiar.”

That took Lilia by surprise. Despite the cover it provided, his bat form was far from perfect. Compared to a typical specimen of the species, his ears were a tad keener and his wings a bit larger than supposed to, his messy red strands sticking over his head straight up suspicious, a dead giveaway to anyone paying attention.

His eyes however, though a striking detail in his fae form, one of his most noticeable features were he to take the man made wanted posters spluttered in an unreasonable amount of red paint seriously, were pretty common among the bats of the Valley. There was nothing special about them, and yet as the boy’s narrow gaze dug deeper into his own, his face lit with recognition.

“You... wait. No, it can’t be… You are the wounded bat that landed in my room. You are the one who took me outside!”, he exclaimed and had Lilia been surprised before, he was straight up stupefied to see the child’s face erupt with joy, his upturned pout transforming into the brightest smile. The fae blinked incredulously as the weight of the training sword pressing between his eyebrows disappeared, tossed across the other side of the room with a rippling sound.

“This is the worst choice you’ve made so far.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”, he beamed leveling Lilia with a gaze softer than the first light of the day, as he reached towards his hand, “We’re friends!”

The fae flinched away from the touch as the boy’s declaration sunk in.

“Friends?”, he repeated, tasting the word in his mouth, the awkward mumble of the unfamiliar title barely echoing past his lips, as the boy reached for him again, his small fingers ghosting over the leather fabric of his vambrace coated in drool and blood.

The blaring chaos of screams ringing in his head intensified, as his tongue decided.

Unbearably bitter

Drilled through the hardships of war, Lilia’s reflexes were quicker and sharper, catching the human by surprise as he made a grab for the pale hand with far less kindness than the boy’s earlier attempt. The fae’s fingers coiled around the small wrist like a snake, forming a manacle out of obsidian flesh, as he squeezed the bony limb hard enough to hurt.

That warm smile that was making his guts churn in discomfort was wiped, as the kid’s face contorted in pain.

“As if a fae like me could ever lower themselves to the level of befriending a dirty human such as yourself. The only reason I lured you out of this tower in the first place was to use you.”, he spat, prodding the soft sliceable flesh of the prince’s wrist with his nails, a silent warning lest the knight’s son entertained the idea of flailing against him.

“Use me… I thought-”, the human started, making no attempt to move away from the pain, his body standing as limp and motionless as if it were another piece of furniture.

Lilia wished he’d inherited the soulless mask of his father, because the flurry of emotions flashing over his face was making him hurt for reasons beyond his understanding. He loosened his grip instinctually, hoping to reduce a fraction of the pain painting those fragile features in all the wrong shades, but that horrid anguish didn’t waver and Lilia felt his own hand burn the longer it lingered on the child, as if his flesh had been made of silver.

“I loathe humans.”, he hissed, watching a drop of his saliva slide over the kid’s creased forehead, past the slope of his nose and drip across those trembling pink lips, the same way it had when that wretched man had thrown his violent tantrum. Lilia felt himself shake with ire. He may not be nowhere near as large as that wretched bastard -both vertically and horizontally- but he still towered over the nonexistent size of the scrawny child barely reaching the bones of his hips and a part of him knew he must be painting the same ugly image. The general heard himself growl.

“You destroy everything you touch with your greasy hands. Greedy beasts who take and take, until there’s nothing left and then you take again, for good measure.”, he said, addressing both father and son, because the knight may have taken his home -if he ever had the right to call her that- but his child hadn’t been innocent of pillage.

He’d taken something from Lilia. The fae could tell. He didn’t know what it was, only that it flared with every glance towards those accusatory amethyst eyes and that he wanted it back, so he could shove it in the depths of his soul and stop this unbecoming feeling that was making him sick. “I wish you’d never set foot on those lands. I wish you never existed! You ruined my life! So, you can erase whatever delusional bond you thought we had in that small head of yours.”

His chest heaved in the aftermath of his outburst, as years, no, decades of hatred were flung in the open, his anger morphing into a thick static fog that no amount of fresh air the window breathed within these ancient stone walls could ever hope to cleanse. Lilia waited for his breathing to drop to a normal pace before turning towards the child.

“Are you seriously crying?”

Big fat tears streamed down those puffy cheeks, merciless rivers dripping past the flustered face into the stony floor. That upturned line of pink was wobbling worse than the tavern’s drunkards after a couple bottles of wine, looking like a dam about to break, threatening to release a horrible sob from the kid’s throat. Lilia’s hand retracted from the trembling wrist, utterly convinced of his prior notion about the silver disposition of the human, because his palm was burning and it kept doing so even after he’d wiped it across his studded pteruge and pushed it behind his back in a tight fist.

He was overcome by the foolish notion that the only spring capable of quenching that scalding pain from assaulting his nerves would be the one starting from those lilac jewels.

“Stop crying. I said stop crying!”, he yelled straight into the kid’s face, which in retrospect might not have been the best way to calm someone down, but Lilia was navigating the situation on pure emotion and no amount of cognitive procession.

“I’m not crying…”, the boy lied, a blush dusting those lachrymose cheeks, as he ducked his head and proceeded to rub his flustered face with the gentleness of a laundress washing a persistent stain off the linens. Lilia barely caught himself from pulling the kid’s arms away from his face.

He needed to leave lest he did something more absurd than healing a cut.

“I don’t have time for this. I have a mission to complete. Just stay out of my way.”, he announced more to himself rather than his audience as he spun towards the window.

He’d barely made it halfway across the room, before the child jumped in front of him, his stretched arms forming the ficklest barrier the fae had ever seen. The fact that his eyes were still leaking and were bloodshot as well, which could have easily been avoided had the kid possessed the common sense not to punish his face whenever it did this horrid crying thing, did little to reinforce the image of sturdiness the kid was probably going for. Lilia cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t want to fight you.”, he stated, which Lilia found awfully hypocritical if not duplicitous, since the kid had been the one to propose it in the first place and was now blocking his way.

There was always the option of pushing the human aside, but when he gulped a preparatory breath and relaxed his frigid stance, opting for a more composed posture, Lilia thought he might as well hear him. “I know you don’t want to be my friend, but if it weren’t for you, I would have never seen the stars or my mother. I wouldn’t have run in the gardens or danced and I would never have tasted those pies.”, he added with a warm smile, his eyes drifting somewhere above Lilia, as if reminiscing, “So, even if it was to use me, thank you for taking me out.”

And for the briefest moment the general found himself at a loss. Because how could this naïve summer child thank him for something as trivial as taking him for a midnight stroll when Lilia had explained how he’s meant to use him? How could he be so accepting of being exploited? How could he bear to look at him with that soft gaze as if Lilia had shown him the world, rather than a garden?

But then the prince’s eyes narrowed, and his legs bent as if preparing to receive a strike and when his mouth opened his voice came a tad firmer than before.

“But I can’t let you go.”

In all his lifetime, Lilia didn’t think he’d ever met a human as brave as that child. Nor as stupid.

“I've been killing eons before you were even conceived. Beasts ten times your size, men armed like lobsters. Fae and humans alike. Didn’t matter whether they were powerful sorcerers, or bloodthirsty assassins, acclaimed gladiators, or noble knights.”, he seethed, omitting the other professions comprising his infinite kill list, because beheading a few disagreeable jesters and stabbing some pitchless musicians was hardly relevant to his point, as he approached the backtracking prince with dragging feet, until the child’s back met the windowsill. “In the end the blood staining my hands was the same glistening red. Are you foolish enough to think you stand a chance?”

“No.”, he admitted, meeting the fae’s threat with a burning stare of fearless purple glittering with an amber shimmer that reminded Lilia of the crepuscular ocean, before stepping straight into his personal space, “But that doesn’t mean I’ll stand down. I don’t know what your mission is, but I won’t let you go until you give me your word that you seek no harm.”

His word? That kid was seriously going to trust the word of a fae that had just confessed to deceiving him the entirety of their encounter? Someone should really be teaching that child a lesson on survival skills, because Lilia doubted this mindset was going to get him through double digits.

“The people in this castle are innocent and it’s a knight’s duty to protect them.”

“Is it now?”, the fae leered, reignited anger pulsing through his veins at the sheer ridiculousness of the statement, “Were the knights standing idle while your uncle beat the living shit out of you protecting the innocent then?”

He watched what little color those pale features possessed drain from his face, as the human jerked away from the fae’s body, looking as if he’d been slapped. And Lilia knew how that would look because he had seen the boy get hit straight in the face by his own blood, while his idols of justice and solidarity turned a blind eye.

Somewhere along the line his priorities had shifted, because suddenly the only thing that mattered was for that gullible and annoying selfless human that clung to dead ideals and false hope to see that the ground beneath his feet was frozen and the world he put his faith in was a desert of eternal winter.

The silver shoes he was trying to fill were full of holes.

“Was that part of their sworn duty?”

“No-”

“Do you think they would have caught you had you run? A defenseless child pleading on its knees. Maybe they would have spared you.”, he theorized, his hands moving conversationally, before they were dropped to his sides, his burbling voice shifting to a low whisper, before the kid got a word out of his fluttering goldfish mouth. “No. No they wouldn’t. They would have delivered you to the man beating you because that’s what they’d been ordered to do.”

“They couldn’t-”

“Is that what justice means to you humans? Blind obedience?”

“No, that’s not-”

“Or did you deserve getting punished? Was your uncle right to bash your head against the wall? Is that what you think child?!”, he yelled, his raised voice causing the chirping birds to fly away, and suddenly no one was trying to interrupt his spiraling monologue.

Instead of striving to put in a word of defense in the name of his heroes, the boy fell silent, his tiny fists curling against the hem of his bloodstained shirt for a couple of tense moments, before the fabric had been drooped and the sweaty palms had returned to his sides, dangling lifelessly in defeat.

From the moment he’d awakened, his heartstrings were being pulled with every burst of emotion flooding across that childish face, his soul, an out of tune lyre struggling to follow the twists of a melody he could barely tell apart. But there was no music to decipher, no clay to sculpt, not a drop of paint on this blank canvas of glazed gray eyes. And Lilia decided that he’d take the tears any time, he’d brave the tantrums and manage the smiles.

But he couldn’t bear to face the dawn in a colorless sky.

He couldn’t handle the child’s surrender when he looked so utterly resigned.

“I told you to stop looking at me like that!”, he seethed, tucking the words he’d wished to say away.

“Like what?”, he asked exhaustedly, and Lilia found himself bristling.

“You want to know what my mission is so bad? Want to know if I pose any danger to the poor blameless residents of these halls? I am here to take back what you humans have stolen from me!”

The logic side of him joined the chorus of internal shouting, screaming at him to quit divulging crucial information of his very secret and very consequential mission to the enemy’s lair, but no matter how harshly it blared over his eardrums, the voice of reason paled in front of the impending need to remind himself of his purpose. He’d allowed himself to pity the son of the devil, he’d even gone as far as to feel the unreasonable urge to protect said defenseless child, to lift his blindness and address him with reason.

And what a mistake that had been. He’d tangled himself to his own web and fallen for his own distraction. But the moment of reprieve was over and Lilia was done playing games that led to dead-ends. He was done sullying her memory. He was done making mistakes.

There was no point for a creature of the night to fly this close to the sun.

“I am here to return the fae heir to his rightful place, the egg your kind ripped from my hands all those years ago, the prince kept imprisoned in this castle’s same treasury. That was the only reason I ever came back to this castle, the only reason I got you out, the only reason you saw the stars.”, he added the last part after a moment’s time, because the human would do well to distinguish a foe from a friend, and they weren’t friends.

Not that the child would ever gain a mate stranded within these four walls. He supposed that this was where their similarities stopped, since Lilia would allow a companion past inside his self-made walls.

The friendless fae walked around the friendless human and stood over the tight rim of the windowsill, before another voice made him still.

“Who the fuck are you talking to brat?!”

He admonished himself for growing careless enough to not notice the newly commissioned guard standing at the other side of the old dovecot’s door. Although standing may have been an exaggeration, because with his enhanced hearing Lilia could hear his shuffling feet, the creak of a middle-aged back being forced to a stand, the typical hoarse timbre of sleep coating his every word. The steady drum of his heart reached the fae’s pointed ears seeping into the room past the door’s gap, echoing with such astounding clarity in his sobering mind, that the general failed to comprehend how on earth it had managed to float past his radar this whole time.

Lilia’s hands rested on his cleaver, his neck snapping to the right with a satisfying creak, preparing for a fight, hoping to silence the target before he got the time to alert the entire castle of his presence, but the jingling ring of an eroded keychain stopped the moment the boy spoke.

“Just the birds.”

The words lingered in the open for a prolonged moment, before the weight of the man thudded against the door, as he slid to the floor and went back to sleep.

“Well pipe it down or else I’m making you eat them.”, the man groaned before yawning, “Talking to birds… What an absolute nutcase.”

Lilia dropped his battle stance, allowing his shoulders to relax and a sigh of relief to leave his lips. This could have gone so wrong had it not been for-

“I wish you get to find your prince.”

Lilia hated how earnestly those words had been said, how that meddling human had been able to toss aside decades of hatred as if the feelings eating him alive had been nothing but a wooden toy in the hands of a forgiving child. He didn’t want his forgiveness and he didn’t need that bitter forced attempt at a smile, that cringed ever so slightly at the area where the child’s lips met the king’s imprinted fingers.

He was struck by the realization that he’d never asked for the kid’s name. His mouth opened for the briefest moment, before it closed, words of inquiry dying in his throat. Because it was better not to know.

His eyes lingered, basking in the sunset’s glow for what he knew would be the last time, before he stepped back and dived across the sky.

The last thing he saw as gravity claimed him whole was the concerned look of a nameless human face dashing over the windowsill, before Lilia moved his gaze away.

_

“The king has asked for your presence in the front gate.”, the low gruff of the knight echoed across the hall that would have been entirely empty had it not been for the guard standing in attention over the silver-lined door of the treasury.

“What?”, the other man perked up from his post, taking off his helmet to reveal a bearded face creasing with disbelief, “I can’t just leave my post. I’ll get in so much trouble with the captain.”

“I’ve been sent to swap you out. If I were you, I wouldn’t keep the king waiting,”, the first guard continued, his voice coming out muffled, a metallic sound slipping past the thick walls of his helmet, as he settled next to him uncaring of his decision, yet eager to provide an unbiased opinion “especially not when he’s throwing another fit.”.

The two men stood like that for a while, helmet and helmetless staring in the distance, before the first resumed to mumble in an ominously wicked tone.

“But in the end, it’s not my head on the line.”

“Fuck.”, the Silver Owl cursed as he made a beeline for the front gate, “Just make sure nothing happens while I’m gone!”

The guard nodded, shoulders pressed back, boasted chest, raised chin, holding himself in a perfect reflection of vigilance and pride, as he heard the other man jog away, until the storm of footsteps had faded in the distance.

Lilia dropped the transformation in an instant, the silver armor melting to reveal his leather clothes, shining gauntlets giving their place to a sequence of vine shaped tattoos, the metallic shell covering the entirety of his head molding into the form of his fae mask, a shredded cloak replacing the tasteless blue cape of the Silver Owl’s order. A curt exhale of relief left the fae’s lips, a sound drowned by the coarse green material of his mask. Disguises were imperative during undercover operations and Lilia had been infiltrating enemy bases long before the humans had set foot in the Briar Valley, but wearing the badges and colors of his foes always left him with a bad taste.

The first two doors relented immediately, the weak spells of his own making breaking upon the castor’s command, as he moved towards the third level. Orange arcane sigils ignited over the last wall of defense and Lilia, a firm believer of ripping the bandage off and popping the shoulder back before one had time to dwell on the pain, pressed his hands against the silver surface.

Sheer blinding pain shot through his arms, the smell of sizzling flesh wafting across the hall, as every muscle in his body tensed and his chest began convulsing with ragged irregular breaths. The fae watched his palms blistering, the black flesh of his fingers turning into an angry red, as the first layer of skin melted against the silver surface. All of it would have been for nothing had his own blood muddled the purity of the human’s coating his fingers ever since he’d tried to heal him, but in the end -after a few more agonizing seconds- the spell approved the seal of the blood sacrifice, as the conditions of the curse were met.

Lilia didn’t wait for the door to open entirely before he was barging in, crimson eyes darting among every magical item and costly trinket, until he found what he was looking for lying haphazardly in the corner of the room with the rest of the king’s stolen toys.

His knees almost buckled, his weight suddenly insurmountable to support, as Lilia collapsed next to the egg, his shaking hands hovering over its coarse surface. It had been years since he’d seen it and he’d only been trusted to hold it once -although after that fateful night the fae wished his arms had fallen off his body the moment he laid his useless hands on the most precious cargo- but he’d memorized every inch of it. Where the blotting rivers of ink intertwined and where they separated, where its glittering black surface softened and where it solidified, where Malleus’s heartbeat drummed rhythmically over his thick cell.

And when Lilia drew his hands over that exact spot, hoping to catch even the tiniest hint of a pulse, he was met with silence.

A singular tear escaped the water dam pooling at his lower eyelid, absorbed by his mask material before it got the time to drip past his jaw and the fae realized he was beginning to hyperventilate. Lilia chastised himself as he rubbed his eyes before they got to shed more tears, pushing his mask to the side to do so.

He wasn’t familiar with the physical stages a dragon embryo underwent before hatching. He was jumping to the worse conclusions and acting like an entirely unhelpful pathetic mess while the guard he’d sent away was getting closer to the gate, hence closer to blowing his cover, with every passing moment.

He would not screw this up again.

Upon touching the egg his entire body shuddered, goosebumps blossoming over his lower back, as Lilia felt the briefest twinge of familiar magic fill his senses. The fae basked in the sudden shock, a darker cloud radiating off his already smoking palms, as he drunk every flare of her protective magic until it sizzled out of existence after recognizing his intentions.

He didn’t bother wipe the rest of the tears off his eyes as he tugged the egg below his cloak and threw another glamour over him, before breaking into a run. Both feet and hands burned for completely different reasons as the fae sprinted past the halls, ignoring the curious glances of surprised maids and wary guards. He knew he was painting a suspicious image, a fully armored knight -in the midst of summer nonetheless- dashing across the castle with an unreasonably large hump over his back, but there was no way he’d be able to walk in a leisure pace with the levels of anxiety coursing through his veins. Lilia had turned into a living lightning bolt shooting from passage to passage, not stopping even when his vision turned white upon meeting the blazing midday sun, as he made his way across the outer walls.

He bet his life -and the fae prince’s life- that he’d be able to trick the guards of the gate long enough to let him pass and once he’d stepped outside, he’d be no longer restricted by the magic laws of the castle, free to teleport all the way to the mountaintops of Mount Dread if he wished so.

“Halt!”, a voice rang behind him and Lilia forced himself to stop. He wasn’t close enough to the gate to ignore the yell and make a run for it and when he saw a human adorned in the typical fashion of the sorcerers’ division within the employment of the Silver Owls, his sky blue cape fastened at the side with a star shaped silver mantle and a couple of medals that made him rank higher than Lilia’s soldier status, he knew that the outcome of his mission was hanging from his following words.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“The captain has asked me to polish his helmet.” were the first words that came to mind sealing a terrible outcome, because there was no way the suspicious mage eyeing the bump on his cape with accusatory eyes was going to buy a word of his poor excuse.

“Has he now?”, the man asked, his voice brimming with doubt, as he leveled Lilia with a nasty glare, “That’s odd since I just saw him wearing it.”, and wasn’t that just his luck.

Out of the corner of his helmet’s slits the fae caught sight of a squad of soldiers heading towards the underground level of the treasury led by the bearded knight Lilia had fooled with his glamour. He was running out of time.

“May I inspect your work soldier?”, the sorcerer pressed, extending a hand towards Lilia as the other wrapped tighter around his silver staff.

“Sure.”

The man cried in pain as Lilia’s foot met his grip on the magical weapon, disarming him with a single movement, before tossing the magic infused cane over the other side of the wall, and going for a punch across the shocked face of the sorcerer. He didn’t stay long enough to watch the man slump into the ground, which in retrospect had been a grave mistake because had he not dismissed the fallen adversary so quickly, he might have caught him reaching for his side and pull out a wand.

An orange blast collided with his back sending the fae flying across the stone floor, his rushing momentum stopped only when his head was violently knocked against the stone battlements. Except had his head come in contact with the stone battlements it wouldn’t be hurting this much, wouldn’t be feeling as if it had been set on fire and when Lilia raised his eyes he was met with a silver wall of armor. He didn’t jerk away quickly enough to avoid the burning metal hand from wrapping against his own, his disguise melting immediately upon encountering his kryptonite.

“A fae!”, the armored man yelled, as more guards flooded the battlements scurrying at his call, “It’s trying to steal the egg-” Lilia cut him, knocking him off his feet with a sweep of his legs, before bringing the egg towards his front, pressing it against his chest so hard he feared it would shutter.

He made a run towards the opposite direction, willing to return to the castle, to stave off the open field and use the narrow halls to his advantage but was surrounded before he’d got the chance to flee, the knights’ order crowding the path on his right, while the mages’ division rushed through the path on his left. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Lilia chose neither, as he made a jump over the edge of the wall, his body curling protectively around Malleus’s cell as gravity claimed them both.

His feet hit the soil with a gentle thud, his levitating powers activated during the descent to break the rush of his fall, before fae and egg made for the woods. The magical shield thrown around them meant to protect the pair from the promise of incoming arrows whispered among the tautening strings of bows the fae’s enhanced hearing caught with ease, failed to protect them from the firing onslaught assaulting them from the front.

The satisfied smile stretching across Lilia’s face at the mangled chaos of orders and accusations echoing across the length of the castle walls, pushed further away with every one of his hurried steps, was exchanged for an irritated scowl as soon as he found himself caught in an ambush of relentless raging beaks and even though the small bills of the birds were hardly an equal comparison to the sharp blades of the darts targeting his back, each annoying peck over his flesh left him similarly enraged.

“This is not the time you useless chickens!” Lilia snapped, swinging a frantic hand around as if he’d been chasing flies off his meal, caring little whether a few of the birds got caught in the force of his swing.

“I am one peck away from having roasted bluebirds for lunch!” Lilia warned, his threatening tone going unnoticed by a particularly pesky blue bird that had managed to get his claws on the long strands of his ponytail swishing past his back, yanking the dichromatic hair hard enough to cause the fae to turn back if only to level said menace of a bird with a nasty glare.

That’s when it happened.

Lilia’s eyes widened, crimson orbs shrinking into their snowy confines, as a blast of sheer magical energy shot through the top window of the tower and the sky erupted in white.

His feet moved on their own as he ran back to the castle.

Chapter Text

Lilia had never run this fast.

He'd bolted out of buildings while their wooden walls burned into ashes and leapt over exploding trenches as their earthen confines went up in flames, he'd scrambled away from poisoned arrows eclipsing the sun and cut through their opponent’s convoys scouting the land. A blazing beacon of hope for his troops rushing through the enemy’s front line, an omen of death for his foes as he broke their formation and ended the fight.

His speed, one of his greatest assets on the battlefield -overtaken only by his magical prowess and fighting technique- had been nothing but an obstacle during the cloudless days of youth. Because all his flying feet could ever hope to be at court was the object of their scorn. A useless contender at tag since losing deprived his noble playmates of the fun. A bad sportsman putting to shame the pampered daughters and entitled sons, a greedy orphan who refused to be outmatched.

No one would have guessed that the legendary title of the queen’s beast hollered among his men and whispered among the enemy’s ranks was bestowed to him by a couple of sour brats.

But were he to reverse the hourglass and watch the sand trail back, were he to go back to those endless days of metaphoric sun she would have loathed him with all her black heart. Because despite the pouts and the jabs, his princess was content to let her favorite servant lead every game of tag. Because it mattered little how fast Lilia could run, since his bony legs would never manage to outlast the princess’s glorious wings as the dragon soared over the stars.

And yet Lilia had gone and stolen her most prided trait. Because how else was the fae blasting past the wind, leaving its feathery subjects clinging onto him, how was he gliding over the earth, as if the grassy soil had turned into ice beneath his feet, had he not grown his own pair of wings?

He wished he could swirl into his bat form and tear through the sky, releasing himself from his limbs’ heavy confines, but there was no way he'd manage to cover the distance to the tower while carrying an egg ten times his weight and thrice his size.

The plotting strategist was entirely gone, any remnants of the levelheaded general torn to shreds the moment that white flash of light overcame the horizon and even though the screaming echoes from within were far from brought to a halt, the only thing Lilia’s clotting slush of a brain could focus on was a relentless whisper to get back.

He threw himself in the open with nothing but a hastily summoned shield covering him, a trembling barrier made of uneven fuchsia tendrils of magic, that was one silver-coated blade away from dissolving into thin smoke.

Lilia would have become the most glorious cullender in all of Briar Valley had the archers positioned across the castle’s perimeter not vacated their posts, joining the impromptu Silver Owl party sent to rake the woods in search of the supposed fae thief. Said criminal could easily hear their motivated shouts drawing further away from the walls and from him, entangled in a game of hide and seek he swore he’d win.

He adjusted his cloak, twisting the fabric around his torso until he’d created a sturdy enough swaddle to support the egg, before he was leaping over the walls, slipping into a more appropriate appearance, trading leather with silver with a quick glamour the moment his feet hit the solid stone.

His knees rattled, howling over the abrupt landing, but Lilia paid them no mind as he made towards the castle’s interior. He’d very much like to float directly to the top, but even a child would be able to tell there was something suspicious about a human guard floating above its head.

“Keep the gate open! We’re sending more men.”, a knight screamed from over the bailey, as a second search party skidded towards the woods.

“Hey you! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”, someone called from behind him, a general judging by the assembly of medals hanging over his silver-plated chest, but other than a fleeting glance Lilia spared him no thought, lest he got roped into hunting his own ghost.

He was inside in a moment’s time, climbing his way to the tower’s top, the spiraling staircase curling like a maiden’s ringlet, his only opponent within the empty halls. Lilia caught himself tripping over the steep and slippery floor an embarrassing number of times, but not once did he entertain the idea of slowing down.

He only succumbed to his legs pleads for taking a break after he’d reached the familiar eroded rivers painting the old oak door, thanking whatever entity had prevented Malleus from becoming an omelet bleeding over his mother’s old home, as he doubled over himself and allowed himself a short moment of rest. His free hand moved instinctually over the cleaver before Lilia noticed a small ray of sun peeking over the slit between wood and stone, breaking the dense darkness of the lightless hall.

Crimson bled over the gap of the door left haphazardly ajar, as Lilia dared to take a glance.

“The fae's magical footprint is all over the place my king.”, a clinically steady voice echoed, drawing his ruby orbs towards its owner, a skinny old man holding a shining sphere on the curve of his palm, sporting a similar shade to his snowy hair, or whatever was left of his them. Lilia’s darted from the man’s balding head to the sizzling orb, his face lighting with recognition at the floating runes.

In hindsight he should have identified the detection spell the moment that blast of energy tore the sky. Afterall his own unique magic was a glorified scanning charm and although it did come with a few special properties that this version failed to encompass -such as visual manifestation of the past which he was immensely grateful for, since he wouldn’t withstand attend a theatrical play performed by himself- its function was more or less the same.

Half his view was blocked from his position and the child was nowhere near the door, so the fae scrunched his eyes shut and focused, keeping his ears open to the telltale beat of his small heart.

Dissecting different pulses came naturally to predatory creatures such as himself, but between his own spiking chest and the numerous leisure beats of the guards sprawled across the room, it took a while for Lilia to find the particular rhythm of the human’s percussion.

He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he finally heard it.

The gentle pattering cadence of the boy’s chest.

And even if it curbed along its edges, beating in a slightly more jittery manner to its usual tempo, Lilia’s shoulders dropped in relief as he basked on its sweet melody. And then he heard the irregular jumble of a bigger, more strained organ struggling to pump blood through clotted veins and the hole-ridden rug of safety was pulled under his feet.

“It had been lurking right under our noses and we didn't catch a whiff of him!” Henrik screeched, causing a couple of knights, ever the courageous heroes, to draw back a few steps. The man had grown the same shade to a tomato, the vibrant color contrasting with the white fur swinging with the rhythm of his arms, its edge stuck uncomfortably against his sweaty neck. “Damn fae. Tell me where it's gone now!”, he howled before disappearing from Lilia’s line of vision.

“I don't know where he's gone.”

The fae felt his heart skip a beat, his fingers tightening protectively over the egg, and although he’d already known from the very much living sound of the kid’s heartbeat, he still felt himself shudder with relief. He was okay.

“Yes, the same way you didn't know who let you out of the room. You're full of lies! Do you have any idea how appalled your parents would be? They devoted their whole lives fighting fae keeping humanity safe from those monsters' claws and you dare protect one?! My poor sister must be rolling in her grave.”, the man spat, daring to invoke the memory of the kid’s dead parents. Lilia didn’t know what principles that nameless woman had possessed during her lifetime, but he doubted she’d concede at having her only son, the boy that shed tears at the sight of her stone-cold face for the first time in his miserable life, suffer in the hands of her so-called brother.

“He doesn't seek harm. H-he gave me his word.”, the boy stammered.

Lilia’s eyes widened at the boy’s defense. After cursing the memory of his loved ones and speaking ill of those he recognized as gods, after insulting his own race and wishing he’d never been born -although he hardly meant that last comment to be taken personally, since he was addressing his species as a whole- the kid had the gall to put his faith in him. Oh, he was so much more foolish than Lilia had originally thought. The fae had abandoned him to his grim fate with no intentions of coming back, letting him pay the sins of other men and rot.

“His word? How stupid can you be?!” Henrik hollered and Lilia couldn’t believe that he was actually agreeing with that wretched pig, “The black souls of the fae are only capable of lies and blood. Your little friend is massacring my soldiers as we speak because of your stupidity.”

He held no objections to the last part. He’d gathered as many eyeballs as bloodcurdling monikers, the stories of the few survivors of the general’s rage turning into warning fairytales spoken in the guise of darkness to horrified human children. But he couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes at the first accusation. Because fae were incapable of lying outrightly by design and the only person Lilia had ever managed to fool was himself.

He barely caught the boy’s crestfallen mumble.

“We're not friends...”

“Speak up!”, that man shouted shamelessly. Lilia had half the mind not to barge into the room and rip out his tongue, might as well branch out his collection in a different direction, but then that pure child of the sun was speaking again, defending him and the fae was rendered immobile at that soft tone brimming with righteousness.

“All he wanted was to get their prince back. He was taken from them. It's only right he gets him back-”

“Who do you think took him in the first place?!” Henrik raged and Lilia pulled himself away from the door as if the sight of the guards’ turned backs had burned him. He pressed his body against the wall, head tilting to meet the stony ceiling, swallowed by the staircase’s darkness, as he waited for the child’s verdict with bated breath. His eyes closed as he loosened the pull of his makeshift swaddle and brought the egg against his chest, ignoring the way his singed palms screamed at the pressure.

“That's wrong.”

And suddenly all the screaming stopped. It had taken two and a half words for his feet to stop aching, his lungs to quit shaking, his blaring mind to end its haunting, his frozen heart to stop breaking. He was torn between relishing in the newfound silence or cringing over the jarring echo of nothingness.

It had taken two and a half words for the simplicity of the situation spoken by the unmarred lips of the blameless to dawn on him. Because it was wrong of the humans to take the one person he ever loved away. It was wrong of them to deprive a son of his mother, to rob a kingdom of its heir. The same way it was wrong of a man to lock a child away, to punish and degrade, to starve and watch it waste away.

It was wrong to cage the sun.

For the first time it was as simple as that.

“I don’t care if I must rip a hundred fae eggs out of their mothers’ arms. I would break every last of them if that led me to the throne.”, the devil hissed, “So you will either tell me willingly everything that was said while you were fostering the enemy under my roof or I will have my mages crash your stupid skull and take whatever information they can directly from the source!” Lilia growled in the darkness, his eyes blazing with the intensity of fiery suns, as the king paced across the room, the wooden floorboards creaking under the pig’s weight.

“But I already told you-”

“All you've told me is half baked lies.”, he seethed and the fae could picture his large frame looming over the child, spit dripping from an angry snarl, landing over the human’s forehead still stained with his own blood, as the king roared and made the boy shrunk. And as the nasty image became clearer, Lilia conjured every disgusting detail in his mind palace, from the distinct wobbling of the kid’s lips to the purple tears leaking from his eyes, but he failed to notice the way his own hands were beginning to twitch.

“I will get what I want brat even if I must crash your skull myself!”

This time Lilia didn't wait for the downpour of footsteps to stop. He didn’t stall enough to hear the slapping sound.

This time he lunged.

The rickety door snapped resolutely out of its tortured hinges as Lilia leapt across the room, his cleaver flying off his death grip with clear target. The echo of the dilapidated oak crashing against the floor resounded way louder than the drop of the king’s mutilated hand, but the fae couldn’t say the same about the horrified screeches that followed.

He didn’t stay around long enough to watch the pudgy appendage meet the floor, as he sprung towards the child pushed into the corner of the room. His blistering hands were raking the slack body of the human, searching for any sign of injury his eyes might have missed under the deceptively dry layer of the previous day’s blood, before his knees had even made contact with the ground. His chest was heaving with shallow uneven breaths as he moved towards the head, picking every strand of gold apart with raw desperation, as his fears were put to rest.

His hands moved on their own as they wrapped around the child burying the human against his chest, and before he knew it the bloodthirsty feared general of the right, the queen’s beast, the fae executioner, hell incarnate and all was melting into those taut soft shoulders, leaning against the kid’s frame with all his weight. The exhale that escaped his thin lips was shaky at best, a wordless whisper of gratitude, a proof to his greatest sin, as the fae nuzzled against the prince’s neck basking into the putrid fragrance of dry blood and fresh sweat, feeling the kid tense before relaxing into the fae’s death grip as much as the crashing arms that enveloped him allowed him to.

It was as if the whole room had collectively decided to take a breath, the guards petrified at their king’s aghast screams as the man doubled over the floor and thrashed against the pain, cradling the sliced appendage against his torso in his remaining palm, while Lilia kept losing the count of the boy’s calming pulse, as it tangled with his own, pressed as he was so close to his heart.

He hated to pull away, but the soldiers would be bound to fate’s freezing spell for so long and Lilia’s soul was still contaminated with rage, so he gripped the child’s arms and pushed him off ever so gently. His fingers moved towards the kid’s cheeks absently wiping away dried tear tracks, tilting his lowered head until those glorious eyes he’d somehow conceded to never see were looking straight at him.

He’d never held the galaxy in the palm of his hand before.

“Don’t let go.”, he mumbled low enough for only the human to hear, before his eyes were moving away from the watercolor shades of the dusk and pointing towards the glimmering stary night resting between his thighs. It took a moment for the child to catch on, but when his gaze settled on the egg, a metaphorical candle flame lighting somewhere in his head, every trace of puzzlement disappeared. And when he hesitantly took the fae heir into his hold, Lilia thought that not even the dragon’s mother had held her son as delicately and cautiously as those pale human hands.

The boy nodded at him oozing with a steady reassurance the fae knew he didn’t feel, the same way he knew that the only way anyone would manage to pry Malleus away from that child’s tight grip would be over his dead body.

Lilia’s hand rested over the golden bundle of hair for the briefest moment, before he was moving towards the crescent wall of servants surrounding their fallen king. He pulled his cleaver from the wall, embedded in the center of an abstract painting of spluttered blood and let it hang across his sides, its grounding weight doing little to reduce his rage.

“You will not lay a finger on him again.”, he warned, assuming a husky low timbre, the ominous rumble of death, shifting from whatever gentle version that child had managed to dredge out of him to the familiar role of the general. The place was beginning to reek of blood.

“Ahh! You monster! My hand. My dominant hand!”, he howled, a sound ranging somewhere between begging and seething. Henrik’s indecisiveness escalated, as he altered between shrill wails and strident cries, his face twisted in a red mess of tears and snot, sliding straight into the floorboards he was lying against, creating a disgusting pool of mucus beneath his head, and an even more revolting puddle beneath his crotch.

He made for a pitiful sight, but Lilia did not feel an ounce of mercy in his cold heart.

Not when Henrik was pressed against the same wall he’d smashed the child’s head.

“How could you?”, he heard himself say and now it was his turn to stagger between emotions, his tone flirting between sheer white wrath and something more somber. Something akin to hurt. “What kind of man attacks his own blood? What kind of monster hurts a child?!”

Lilia tried to control himself as he stood over that fat flailing body, but his body was trembling with anger. That child that was so easy to trust and smile and forgive. That child that had blown past the walls he’d meticulously built. That child that had been anything but kind to him. Him!

“I will have your limbs ripped one by one!” Henrik barked and Lilia marveled at the way his spit managed to defy the claws of gravity to land onto his hand. He felt it slide past his fingers and drop to the ground, but not once did he tear his eyes away from that excuse of a man. “I will gather my armies and set for your whore of a queen! Sending her bloody assassins to have me killed…”

“I am not here under the queen’s command.”

“Then who the fuck sent you fae?”

He spat the last part as if were a curse, venom coating at every letter of the word, the same way Lilia had addressed the human and the fae felt sick at the comparison. Henrik also appeared sick, his fuming crimson face assuming a horrible green shade, before he was rolling off his back with the grace of an elephant seal, and emptying the -no doubt plenty- contents of his stomach across the floor. Lilia didn’t cringe away as the curdled chunks of undigested food splashed over his boots, despite how distasteful the color combination of beige, red and green was.

“Liar!”, the man spewed between dry heaves, “You’re just trying to protect her from my anger, aren’t you? Trying to make me doubt my men.”, he continued. Lilia had never meant to insinuate betrayal. He was far too caught up in his emotions to devise any sort of coherent plan that would shift the blame away from him. And if he was being honest with himself, he’d accept all the blame gladly, if it came with that wretched human’s fear.

Or his head. Lilia wasn’t about to start being picky at this age.

“I will have her hand chopped off in retaliation.”

“You will do no such thing.”, he promised, because the general would make sure Henrik would never raise his hand -the one remaining that is- against anyone ever again. His grip on the cleaver’s hilt tightened as he flicked his fingers towards the door, causing the fallen plaque to rise and move towards its intended place, its lock twisting with an ominous click.

“Your reign is over vermin.”

“Don't just stand there idiots!” Henkrik wailed, “Kill him!”

He was tempted to end it all then. All it would take was a practiced swing. Of course, he’d have to be frugal with his strength and apply the appropriate amount of pressure to avoid a clean cut, which was near impossible judging by the way his arms quaked with amassing energy asking to be released, but as the weak form of the boy being yanked across the room, the monster’s grip clawing at his head, flashed across his mind, Lilia thought he’d manage. If only to watch the man choke on his own blood and ever so slowly and breathlessly painfully succumb to a delightful death.

“Watch out!”

The kid’s whine pulled him out of his thoughts quick enough to jump out of a silver blade’s trajectory targeting the now empty space his throat used to be but a moment ago, before he spun on his heels and cut through his attacker’s calf with his cleaver, causing the human to collapse on the floor cradling the foot he’d chopped off. Lilia rolled his eyes. He’d doubted he’d emerge out of this situation without a new moniker and limb butcher did not have a nice ring. He managed a brief glance at the boy, huddled over the far corner of the room, clinging to the egg like a lifeline, before another guard came for his head.

He fended off attack after attack, countering spears and parring swords, rerouting magical beams and swings of magearms. He’d tripped over the red puddles of human intestines two times already, barely catching himself from slipping across the floor, but apart from that Lilia traversed the impromptu battlefield with the elegance of a swan.

The rush of the battle was getting into him, his body pumping with adrenalin, his slitted eyes glinting with the thrill of bloodshed, his movements practiced and precise, the old dusty cloak of the general slipping over his shoulders like a glove. It had been years since he fought with this much vigor. It had been years since he had a reason to fight.

It was a matter of seconds before the small crowd was reduced to a handful of knights, the last three survivors going for a synchronized attack. All it took was a well-timed jump out of their weapons’ way, before the crème de la crème of the human race was tumbling into the ground in a heap of clanking metal, a chorus of sore groans blaring upon the collision.

“Give it to me brat!”

Lilia’s eyes snapped towards the space on the floor that Henrik’s flailing body used to occupy, only to find a disembodied hand. His eyes widened, as his head jerked towards the opposite side of the room, the corner where he’d left the boy, almost breaking his neck in the process.

Lilia knew better than diverting his attention from the battlefield, especially when victory was guaranteed. That was always the moment the conquered made their last attempt to turn the tables, amassing their remaining strength into a single lethal strike much like a wounded animal facing a circling predator.

Desperation was a powerful weapon in the hands of the losing side and so before Lilia had even managed to set his eyes on the child, he was being shoved against the wall, his messy ponytail barely cushioning the collision between his skull and the unforgiving stone.

A huff escaped his mouth, as he attempted to move away, eager to trade the cornered position for an open space as soon as possible, before he was being forced back by a set of rough hands, seizing his shoulders so hard Lilia thought his bones would break under the pressure. The guard looming over him managed to keep him in place singlehandedly as he reached for something the fae couldn’t see in his hazy state.

His eyes had barely blinked the shock of the crash against the solid surface away, before they were blurring again, the sting of unshed tears pricking his eyelids as if it were needles instead of water and the fae couldn’t possibly restrain the torrent from pouring down his face, as the attacker’s hand closed around his throat, his newly acquired silver gauntlet squeezing Lilia’s airway.

The fae’s hands flew towards the guard’s firm grip, hoping to slip between the crevices of the coarse amor and manage to pry those tightening fingers away, his blistering palm burning anew upon contact. Lilia wheezed as he felt his throat’s flesh disintegrate, sucking in the thick clouds of smoke of his own burned skin with every sharp inhale. His body convulsed into a coughing fit, his fists banging uselessly against his strangler’s helmet with nothing but raw desperation, as the ringing in his ears drowned every other noise in the room until all Lilia could hear was the sound of his windpipe collapsing on him.

He was dying.

“I said give it to me now!”, an angry growl somehow managed to penetrate the thick walls of hazy darkness but focusing on his surroundings was near impossible in his breathless state.

A singular voice blared across his mind’s confines, but his exhaustion twisted its frantic words into a chaos of drawled vowels, their blurry meaning impossible to figure out, as he felt his body grow heavy, his flailing arms dropping lifelessly to his sides as the world ebbed away.

His senses were assaulted by a blinding streak of light and Lilia embraced death as if it were an old friend. He may not have worn a smile, but his relief was palpable at the prospect of a way out of this eternal punishment of a life the fates had weaved for him.

But as he blinked the tears away, he realized that the beam of ethereal luster came from the window over as the Silver Owl’s plated shoulder rather than the beyond. The sun streaks tearing the endless blue reflected over the golden head of the child like a holy halo. And then every trace of sunshine disappeared behind a passing gray cloud and Lilia saw the streaks of red woven into the boy’s hair as he was being shaken by Henrik’s remaining hand with a bruising force that was more than enough to make him pass out.

“N-no.”, the boy muttered, his arms clenching protectively across the egg pressed securely against his shaking chest.

He saw Henrik give up, he saw him step back as the kid collapsed onto the floor, splashing across a crimson puddle. He saw him curl around Malleus, bringing his knees around the exposed side of the egg in an all-encompassing hug, so tight Lilia couldn’t tell where the shell ended and his flesh began.

But most importantly he saw Henrik bend over a fallen knight and pull a sword out of his sheath.

“Get away from him!” Lilia screeched, his torn vocal cords stinging worse than his burning skin, as he produced a sound so raw and vulnerable that even the hand enveloping his throat cringed ever so slightly taken aback by the unexpected outburst. New tears flooded his cheeks, as the murky outline of Henrik’s massive silhouette raised the sword, preparing to strike.

And suddenly Lilia was no longer consumed by darkness. A wave of energy crashed over him, a visceral need to move, and the fae withdrew to himself for a single moment, forcing his arcane reserves to respond to his desperate calls for help. He felt himself burn from within, pulling at the string of his magic only to feel it retreat back uncooperatively.

He’d never managed to activate his powers while under the effect of silver not once in his life, and yet he next time his eyes blinked open, facing the covered face of his aggressor with a steely glare, his red orbs were coated in a garish fuchsia layer of paint.

His whole body trembled with the effort of retaining control of his magic lest it crawled back to the safety of his soul’s confines. He felt volatile tendrils of arcane course unnaturally across his throbbing limbs, the familiar warmth that came with its typical activation so polarly different from the forced wave of scorching heat that enveloped him. He didn’t waste a moment, before a blast of sheer energy shot through his chest, sending the guard crashing against the opposite wall.

The change between suffocation and fresh air was almost nauseating, as Lilia struggled not to choke on greedy inhales of oxygen, his bleeding fingers hovering over his roasted throat, still aching with phantom pain.

And then he struck, moving as quickly as lightning.

His feet were on fire as he dashed across the room. In truth, both his balance and his target were bound to suffer from his fuzzy state and the hilt of his cleaver kept slipping from his tight grip drenched as it’d become with his opponents’ blood, but Lilia had not time to ponder as he threw his weapon across the air and flung his body over the two princes.

The fae scrunched his eyes shut, fully expecting everything to go wrong, praying to every entity that was listening for the flesh shield that consisted of his body to hold and for his ribs to block the blade before it reached her son and his human. He only peered them open when he heard the telltale clank of metal meeting the floor.

And then something louder slumped lifelessly on top of the sword, burying the pointy weapon beneath a mass of pudgy flesh and Lilia watched the man who had threatened to rip his arms and rain vengeance upon his people, the man who had raised his hand and struck a child, wither away. Henrik’s glazed gaze darted across the room, but there was no one left to help him, no one left to use and command, as his agape mouth filled with blood.

Lilia’s hand snaked behind the boy’s back, squeezing between the soft flesh and the wooden floorboards, pulling him until he was buried against his chest. He could shield him from the sight of the carnage but he could not stop the sounds from reaching his round ears and so they stayed like that, feeling tiny fingers clench tighter against his blouse with every gurgling noise.

His crimson eyes remained on the dying king, flailing helplessly, as he pushed against the cleaver embedded to his neck with an unsteady hand. Lilia basked at his pathetic wheezing whines, feeling his lips tug upwards at the delightful melody of choking sounds, before the man’s eyes dimmed, losing the distinctive glint of life, as his ugly body parted with his uglier soul.

He was familiar with the human concept of an afterlife and even though he didn’t embrace it, the dualistic cosmology of their manicheaistic reasoning a little too melodramatic for an eternal creature’s tastes, he deeply hoped that hell was real, if only so Henrik would rot in its darkest pits.

He made sure to spit on his dead body before rising to his feet.

“N-no. Don't go...”, the kid hiccupped, and Lilia froze as the trembling hands that have been pulling at his shirt leather hem, wrapped around his legs, making him almost stumbled over the leeching child. His focus turned away from the fallen man as he took in the state of the child.

It appeared as if the only thing anchoring his small swaying body from collapsing was Lilia’s own unsteady corpse, a blind leading blind situation as the two struggled not to fall. The fae kneeled in front of the boy, detangling his arms from his legs, as he pulled the child’s away from his spiked pteruge it’d been resting against, wincing ever so slightly at the weak whimpers of protest that left his wobbling lips.

His weak heart ached more than his bleeding hands even as they settled under the kid’s armpits, supporting his disturbingly scant weight, until the human was resting against his hip, his arm slinging behind Lilia’s neck, as the other continued to hold onto Malleus. The fae’s sensitive ears caught the incoming storm of footsteps, climbing the tower, long before the guards’ sturdy shoulders bashed against the door, trying to tear their way in. The child scooted even closer and Lilia felt his short breaths ghost over his shoulder’s bare skin. They didn’t have much time.

He flew straight out of the window. The human tensed under his grip as they thrust into the open sky, the gentle breeze of the late morning knocking Lilia’s balance ever so slightly. All they needed to do was stay in the air until they’d crossed the castle’s outer wall, so that the fae could access his teleportation magic. He didn’t know how he’d manage to cast such a rigorous spell, when his magic supplies were draining at the simple act of flying, after Lilia’s less than gentle treatment, but it’d better work lest he wanted to condemn all three of them to an early death.

He'd covered half the distance before he felt something heavy coil around his ankle and the next thing he knew, they were falling.

He barely managed to tuck the two princes against his torso and angle his back to take the burn of the fall, before his spine was crashing against the ground and his world was turning black.

_

The first thing he was aware of was the familiar tug of his healing powers rearranging broken bones. A tortured hiss escaped his lips as his arm dangling in a nauseating angle was reset to its original form with an audible clicking sound and Lilia turned to his sides struggling to breathe for the umpteenth time today.

He didn’t know how much time had passed with him heaving sharp inhales, his groans of pain muffled against the grassy terrain pressed against the side of his face, as his magic mended his broken parts. He barely managed to persevere over the tempting lull of sleep that always came with the healing process, and somewhere along the line the paralyzing pain that enveloped him faded enough for him to focus on his surroundings.

The second thing he was aware of was the grounding weight of Malleus’s egg pressing against his stomach. His fingers ran over its surface, seeking comfort from its cold hard shell that remained defiantly unharmed, without so much as a crack to show for Lilia’s demented plan. The fae suppressed a deranged laugh.

It appeared the son was as stubborn as his mother.

The third thing he was aware of was the absence of a soft body clinging against his neck. Lilia jerked into a sitting position, ignoring the agonizing pang of pain spearing his head at the abrupt motion.

“Stay away.”

Lilia’s eyes shot open and the fae barely suppressed an animalistic growl from tearing through his throat, only because it would take more than a quick healing session to mend the damage that silver gauntlet had wrecked upon his vocal cords, but he couldn’t help himself from inwardly cursing at his uncooperative eyes that remained uselessly blurry despite the onslaught of blinking he was subjecting them to.

“Leave him alone!”, he heard the boy scream and Lilia begun hitting his skull lest some jostling brought his senses back. His headache flared with an intensity that made him think his head was about to crack in half, but in the end his eyesight did return to him enough to make the hazy outline of the kid’s small frame standing over him, hands outstretched with his back to Lilia’s form.

And then the fae heard the dreadful sound of a string being pulled taut followed by the all too familiar crack of an arrow tearing the air and his body was moving, mending bones and blaring headache utterly forgotten.

He barely managed to knock the kid off his feet, before the arrow had collided with his chest. Lilia lurched in pain as he felt the silver blade impale his arm instead.

“A-are you okay?”, the boy whimpered and the fae had half the mind not to yell at him to shut up, because suddenly his whole world was spinning, his instincts running haywire as he collapsed back onto the bailey’s soft grass, hitting his head repeatedly against the grass. His arm was convulsing with pain shuddering all the way to jittery fingers, his magic going crazy once again, as he felt the pressure against his neck resurface. He was going to be sick.

“What are you doing?! This is the king's nephew.”, he heard the scolding baritone of a guard.

“Really? I didn’t even know he had a nephew.”

Lilia was flitting in and out of conscience as he watched hot streaks of blood trail from the wound, his veins turning a nauseating black color around the embedded blade. He needed to pull it out. He felt a soft pressure on his other shoulder and turned towards the kid that had settled on his side, crying silently, purple tears leaking out those auroral eyes.

If the fae could master the strength he’d offer a smile, but at the moment, he doubted his face was capable of emoting anything even remotely close to reassurance. Instead, he rested his trembling hand over the child’s own, and took a shaky breath, before biting on the wooden slate he always carried on his belt, as he wrenched the arrow from his flesh.

His throat screeched at the inhuman howl that left him, his arm going numb with pain, as Lilia threw the bloody arrow away. It hurt so badly he thought he’d pass out. Instead, he remained hunched over for another moment, ignoring the steadily approaching guards, forcing himself to breathe and his body to relax, before his eyes opened again, a look of pure determination stretching across his face.

The boy yelped as Lilia hoisted him up with his functioning arm, after undoing the knots of the magic infused rope wrapped around his calf. He bent and grabbed the egg before breaking to a run. His muscles’ screaming rivaled the shouting of the encircling guards as the fae fled towards the gate. The castle’s entrance was kept open for the returning search parties, the latticed grill lined with silver, hanging just below its stony arch.

“Close the gate!”, one of the knights yelled and Lilia heard the pull of a bow before leaping out of the way.

The arrows kept coming as the fae dashed across the field, watching the Silver Owls guarding the entrance hurry towards the rusted winch built onto the stone wall, before the spikes of the grill began to descend with an ominous creak.

The spikes lowered towards the ground with the speed of a land turtle approaching a clover, but Lilia had landed on the opposite side of the gardens with more than a bunch of guards on his tail. The only way he’d made it on time, before the door fell shut would be if he headed straight, no zigzag course, no leaping out of the arrows’ path.

He focused his whole energy on covering as much distance as fast as possible, even when his feet were burning and his head was spinning and his arm -the one dangling lifelessly behind him- was twinging as if it’d been struck by lightning. His hair waved along the wind’s current, his eyes watering at the air’s force, as he approached the gate.

He’d almost made it. He was practically there.

Until an arrow grazed his waist, crushing his building momentum and Lilia was tripping straight onto the floor. Despite the leather knee caps, his joints still took the burn of the fall, and the fae could see the black fabric of his tights darkening as the blood dripped down his calves. He was beginning to feel like some sort of blood dripping sieve.

And he was about to sprinkle the castle with a lot more of that vital red powder, because there was no way he was going to make it to the gate on time. He’d wasted too much time groveling on the ground and because of his failure he was going to condemn everyone to death once again.

Mere moments ago, when the thought of perishing had brought him nothing but comfort. Now, holding the two children in his hands, he felt himself drowning in fear.

He saw another arrow fly past his body, missing his arm by less than an inch, and his head snapped towards the incoming soldiers, preparing himself to fight to the end, but every ounce of purpose drained from his body as his eyes met with her translucent frame.

It couldn’t be. There was no way…

But there she stood, a handful of strides away from Lilia’s fallen form, leveling her general with one of her ruminating gazes that always felt as if they were stripping him off the restricting confines of his flesh, exposing the pits of his black bitter soul and suddenly Lilia was but a foolish boy reaching for the moon. The approaching guards’ silhouettes faded as his eyes zeroed on her, crimson jewels shaking as they met her own emerald gems, his body slackening in front of her spectre.

Lilia opened his mouth before pulling it closed, only to repeat the gaping fish gesture a couple more times, without uttering a single word. A wave of amusement lightened her sharp features, her taut jaw slackening below her smug smile, as her ebony clasped lips stretched familiarly with mirth.

“M-meleanor…” her name dropped from his agape mouth like a sinner’s prayer whispered in the church.

Was he dreaming or was that actually her? Had he hit his head a little too hard or was it really her ghost haunting the halls of her last residence, the gardens of her last home? Perhaps the arrow hadn’t missed its target, perhaps it had struck him straight in the heart and he had fallen in shock conjuring memories of the past as he ran out of blood.

“Is it really-”, he managed, before he felt the small arm wrapped around his neck tightening. His gaze dropped to the cargo nestled in his arms, the child facing the imminent attack, his widened eyes brimming with fear, looking beyond his princess as if she weren’t there. His eyes trailed to the glittering egg, sitting so dutifully quiet within his grasp, patiently waiting for Lilia to take him back, before turning back to her with a new batch of tears trickling down his cheeks.

The real Meleanor would have laughed straight at his face, calling him some variation of pathetic with that taunting regal tone of hers that Lilia craved to hear more than anything in the world, all the while staring at him with her mischievous glare reserved only for her favorite general. But the woman in front of him didn’t mock the fae’s unbecoming tears, she didn’t burst into a fit of high-pitched manic laughter upon Lilia’s inability to speak, instead she eased her expression of smugness into a mask of genuine kindness.

Meleanor was never kind. She was fierce, stubborn and arrogant, always one step ahead of everyone, a raging storm sweeping everything across her path, a blazing meteor of a woman burning anyone who stood in her way. Meleanor was a dragon and the sharp features of the Draconias were not meant for compassion.

He’d dreamt of meeting her again so many times within the past years. He’d make plans about the words he’d been meaning to say. In fact, during a particularly nasty session of heavy drinking he’d even composed a letter, but now faced with her form, faced with that despicable look of understanding, the words remained buried in his throat, and the letter he’d written ashes in a hearth’s stones.

He needed to go.

“Blessed by the night.”, she wished, her last words spewed at him in a lethargic haze, lacking the sardonic bite that had echoed in the Wildrose castle throne room all those years ago. In truth he barely recalled the way she’d spoken back then, it felt like an eternity had passed since that fateful night, an entire lifetime separating him from the man he was before, but Lilia had relived the scene countless times in Morpheus’s distorted realm and not once had his princess’s haughty tone mellowed like that.

He hated how placating his fantasy made her to be. Meleanor would never bless him after what he’d done. Painting her in those soft pastel shades was the worst insult to her memory he could ever commit. Well, apart from leading her to her death, but Lilia doubted anything he could do would ever outstage that.

His eyes flickered to the closing gate. There was still a slim window of opportunity. There was still someone to save.

He didn’t linger enough to apologize, he didn’t even offer her an overdue farewell. Because her ghost was still wearing that heartfelt expression and Lilia could think of nothing as horrible as having her memory sullied like that. Because he feared his buried subconscious would bend her to his deepest desires to appease his heart and the fae could do without being haunted during the waking hours of day. He could do without forcing forgiveness out of an apparition woven by a broken heart.

His feet shook as he turned away from her black silhouette and broke into a semblance of the run. His vision had blurred again as another torrent of tears showered his pale skin, his watering eyes facing the gate’s edge. The spikes had reached well past the level of his hips. It would be a tight fit to squeeze the three of them through the gap, but he’d manage, he had to manage.

On his front, the guards of the gate were beginning to form a wall of armor, on his back, the rain of arrows was still raining down his path. Lilia took a sharp breath, feeling the child’s bones merge with his own, feeling the blotted rivers trailing down the egg’s shell sink against his leather top, as he buried the two closer to his heart, before he lunged. He’d barely managed to dive between a guard’s open legs without burning himself on his silver greaves, breaking the first wall of defense as he headed straight for the closing gate.

His head was licking the grass from below the entry’s arch, his body sliding across the last few feet with his back against the ground, his widened eyes facing a breath away from the silver guillotine heading straight for his face that Lilia realized he wouldn’t make it. His jump had been ill-timed, his trek across the gardens pathetically slow, his own mind games debilitating at best, and now he’d condemned all three of them to an early grave because apparently it wasn’t enough for him to waste his miserable life away, no, he had to go out like one of the humans’ fireworks setting fire to the sky.

The spike would have to go through the human prince’s skull before piercing his heart. The egg would crack and unborn unlucky little Malleus wouldn’t even get the chance to torment Lilia’s ghost forced to wander the same halls as her. His eyes instinctually trailed to his arms. They were going to die. THEY WERE GOING TO DIE-

His momentum decreased ever so slowly, before his sliding was halted completely, his feet stopping little more than an inch beyond the stony arch. It was impossible. The door had been hanging just above his nose a moment ago, there was no plausible way they’d cross the entrance without getting impaled. It made no sense.

Lilia propped his weight on his shoulders to angle his head towards the gate, his furrowed eyebrows slackening with shock. But as soon as he blinked the viridian thorns weaving through the latticed silver pattern evaporated, a handful of emerald snowflakes dancing against the wind before melting onto the ground, the sole proof of their existence.

The guards’ bodies clanged against the gate the moment it fell shut and Lilia thought they’d stayed long enough before wrapping his form in a sparkling veil, fuchsia vines crawling all the way from toe to head. And if he thought he saw a pair of blazing emerald eyes and a smiling princess waving goodbye he said nothing.

They didn’t land far. Lilia hadn’t been very specific about the desired coordinates, which would be a volatile recipe towards disaster were he any less versed in the arcane craft seeping through his bones, but it seemed they’d ended up somewhere along the depths of the Tenebrous woods. That wasn’t particularly helpful, since the forest surrounding the valley was nothing short of enormous, but they’d put ample distance between themselves and the palace so until the fae could get a glimpse of their bearings in comparison to the constellations of the nightsky it would have to do.

It took approximately two and a half seconds before the child was barfing all over his shirt.

“Sorry...”, he murmured, struggling to catch his breath and Lilia resorted to rubbing soothing circles against his back, his own turning stomach sympathizing with strain. It took him approximately two and a half seconds before he realized what exactly he was doing. His hand dropped immediately, trying to play off the movement as part of his attempt to stand up, which he eventually managed anyway.

The kid finally pushed himself away from his vomit dripping shoulder and the fae couldn’t help thinking how the reeking palette of chunky beige complimented the cherry shades of blood and drying intestines nicely.

Lilia remembered the last time those huge watercolor eyes, carved from the first light of dawn and the stary wonder of the nightsky at the north, were looking at him like that and in the end it was that expression of expectance, that look of utter trust that pushed him to ask.

“What is your name boy?”, he managed. He’d almost forgotten the damage his throat had suffered until it was too late. With the wave of adrenalin finally receding, seeping out of his body like the seeds of a dandelion departing from the flower’s stem, he was all the more aware of all the places he was bleeding from, his strained magic reserves working on the more dangerous wounds, his mind growing lethargic with dull pain.

It hurt to swallow, and it was agonizing to talk, his voice a coarse whisper ringing impossibly low, but when the boy seemed to hesitate to offer a response, his gaze cast on his wringed fingers as if it were the most thrilling view in the whole world, Lilia was mildly intrigued.

Had the child finally learnt the price of trust? He wouldn’t fault the human for his prudence, afterall Lilia was a fae and conceding one’s name to his kind was akin to conceding control of his soul, or at least a fragment of it. Of course, the process of giving up one’s name had a more consensual subtext, the storytellers always failed to incorporate in their childish tales, but the kid couldn’t possibly know that. Lilia had moved from collecting names to collecting body parts a long time ago, but he couldn’t have known that either, so the fae just stared at the human prince struggling to decide.

He was mildly curious about what the knight might have named his spawn. Probably something pathetically cheesy like Aurore or Golden, or perhaps something less easy to enunciate like Aurelius. The kid was most likely taking so long to respond because he couldn’t pronounce the name his overly dramatic parents had given him. Lilia didn’t think the arrogant knight beyond naming his son Dawn, but when the boy spoke in the timid tone he assumed whenever he talked of his parents every hint of bitterness evaporated from the fae’s face.

“I... I don't have one.”

“Didn't your parents give you one?”

The boy’s pursed lips sufficed him for an answer, he wasn’t going to make the poor kid spell it out. He wasn’t that cruel.

His eyes still narrowed over the fact that no one in this whole castle had deemed it necessary to give the kid a name. He recalled the guard back in the kitchens mentioning the boy to be almost seven years old!

He felt the sudden urge to turn back to the tower and stomp on Henrik’s lifeless carcass.

He hadn’t thought things through when running away from the castle with the human heir in his arms, but he supposed that the wisest course of action would be to drop his off on the next human settlement they crossed. A part of him argued that the wisest course of action would be to have left him behind entirely, but Lilia was too exhausted to reason with his subconscious.

Well, he couldn’t keep referring to him as a nameless child. Until he found a safe place to deposit him, he’d have to call him something.

The name came to him in an instant and Lilia couldn’t suppress a grin.

“What do you think about Silver?”

“Silver…?”, the boy mumbled, perking a confused eyebrow at the fae, “I guess it's shiny and… sturdy-”

“No, foolish child.” Lilia chuckled, the action grating his throat, “As a name. As your name.”

“Oh.”, he mumbled, his eyes widening as the fae’s words sunk. Lilia watched him taste the sound in his mouth, his tongue rolling awkwardly, drawing out the consonants and twisting out the vowels. “Silver...”, he said and the word echoed foreign spoken through his hesitant lips, as if he had never encountered it before, as if he hadn’t repeated it without sparing a single thought a mere moment ago.

“I like it.”, he concluded, a verdict announced in a warm smile, a hint of pink dusting his cheeks.

“Good.” Lilia stated dryly, mesmerized by the joy contained within those sparkling eyes, as if the fae had offered him all the world, rather than a name. “Are you coming with us Silver?”, he asked already beginning to move towards unknown lands.

Of course, the kid nodded anyway, Silver nodded anyway, not even thinking to ask where they were heading. In truth, Lilia had no idea himself and it was not a matter of tracing the orbit of the stars. But when Silver’s hands latched into his arm, his eyes shining with wonder at the summer’s last poppies and the green gowns of the trees, it mattered little.

And then his own eyes were widening in marvel, his steps faltering ever so slightly.

He was quick to disregard the thought, to pin it down to a fluke, but before he’d wiped the hope off his mind, there it was again and Lilia was crying. Only this time, his eyebrows didn’t crease in pain nor his lips in sorrowful shame. This time he smiled. Because Malleus’s heart was beating beneath his shaking fingertips and even though the sound was faint and the tempo languid compared to the fae’s racing beat, Lilia felt himself beam.

He’d hold onto that hope. He’d let it drench him until he was drunk on it.

Lilia didn’t know for how long his body was consumed with sobs, but eventually the trembling in his chest eased into something lighter and he felt a soft pressure settle on his cheek.

This time the boy’s touch didn’t burn his flesh. This time when his blood-soaked fingers wrapped around his small wrist, his grip was gentle, as if the child had been made out of glass and fairydust, and his weight was grounding, as if he were an anchor rather than a wave meant to wash over the shore.

This time, Lilia basked in the warmth of the sun as if he were an old friend bearing the most precious gifts.

A prince made of silver and a prince made of gold, a child of the moon and the spawn of the sun.

He’d never imagined freedom would taste so sweet behind the bars of his silver cage.